Police fired tear gas and pepper spray at protesters outside Albania's parliament in Tirana on Thursday as lawmakers debated a plan to abolish a quarter of the country's municipalities.
Demonstrators, many from towns set to lose their status, hurled eggs and flares across the metal barriers ringing the building.
The bill, put forward by Prime Minister Edi Rama's governing Socialist Party, would cut the number of municipalities in a country of about 2.3 million people from 61 to 46, folding 15 of them into larger neighbours.
The government says bigger councils will deliver better services. Its critics say the new map was drawn up behind residents' backs, and in breach of the government's own rules.
Fewer, bigger councils
Under the plan, small towns would be swallowed by nearby regional centres. The small town of Selenicë, for example, would be absorbed by the port city of Vlorë.
If passed, it would be the second overhaul of Albania's local map in just over a decade. A 2014 reform slashed 373 municipalities and rural communes down to 61.
The government argues that larger municipalities will have more staff and money to provide better services. Socialist lawmakers also pitch the reform as preparation for European Union membership, which Albania hopes to secure before the end of the decade.
Bigger councils, they say, will be better placed to bid for EU projects and funding once the country joins.
Critics decry a one-sided reform
The opposition Democratic Party says the map was drafted without proper consultation with the people and councils affected, and has called for a referendum. Nearly every local council facing abolition has voted against its own merger.
Critics also accuse the government of ignoring its own yardsticks. The parliamentary committee that drafted the reform set out criteria in advance, including population size and financial health. Yet some councils being abolished score better on both than councils that survive.
Two of the councils being abolished are in better financial shape than one that survives, and even better off than the larger towns set to absorb them.
The opposition goes further, accusing the government of drawing the map with the ballot box in mind. It argues that the new boundaries are designed to tilt future local elections in the Socialists' favour.
The anger has spread well beyond Tirana. Since late July, residents in at least a dozen towns have staged protests, signed petitions and boycotted work. In Poliçan, some locals publicly burned their Socialist Party membership cards.
A one-vote margin
A vote is expected late on Thursday night or in the early hours of Friday, and the arithmetic is tight. Changing Albania's territorial map requires 84 votes in the 140-seat parliament. The Socialists hold 85.
That cushion may already be gone. Days before the debate, two Socialist MPs, Erion Braçe and Vullnet Sinaj, said publicly they would vote against the bill. It is unclear whether they will follow through.
Rama gathered his lawmakers before the session. According to Albanian media reports, he warned that anyone who voted against the bill would be expelled from the Socialist parliamentary group.
For Rama, in power since 2013, the vote is a test of how firmly he still commands his own party. For the towns on the list, the stakes are closer to home: the town hall, the local budget and the sense of having a say over both.
Twelve years ago, Albanians were promised that fewer, larger municipalities would mean leaner and stronger local government. Now they are being promised the same thing again. If the bill passes, the new map will be in place for local elections in May 2027, when voters in the merged towns will get their first chance to deliver a verdict.
