Tirana Municipality is entering an unclear leadership zone. Erion Veliaj remains mayor in legal terms, but he is being held in pretrial detention, while Anuela Ristani has been stripped of the powers with which she had led the municipality since February 2025. The core problem is that the order takes effect immediately, but leaves behind no name, no chain of command, and no clear answer as to who is running the day-to-day operations of the country’s largest local institution.
The order removes powers, but does not resolve the vacuum
The document signed by Veliaj revokes the order of February 14, 2025, through which Anuela Ristani had exercised the mayor’s delegated powers. With this act, she no longer holds the leadership role she had in directing the municipality’s work.
But the latest order stops there. It does not designate another person to take over that role and does not clarify who coordinates the directors, to whom subordinate structures report, and who makes the decisions that until now had passed through Ristani. For an institution with the weight of Tirana Municipality, this lack of clarity is not merely procedural.
Veliaj remains mayor on paper, but not in the normal exercise of the function
Legally, responsibility for leading the executive body remains with the elected mayor, Erion Veliaj. However, he is in a jail cell and in practice is not in a position to normally and directly lead the administration.
This leaves the municipality in a dual situation: the mayor exists formally, but the chain of command on the ground remains unclear. That is precisely where the key question for the city arises: who is actually governing Tirana today?
What can be signed and what remains pending
Under this configuration, the municipality’s directors and structures can continue their work only within the powers they themselves hold or that were previously delegated to them. This means the administration may continue on routine matters, but not necessarily make decisions that require the mayor’s authority.
As for acts that require the mayor’s signature, they may be signed by Veliaj or by a person authorized through a valid delegation. The problem is that the latest order identifies no such person, leaving an open functional gap at the top of the decision-making pyramid.
Ristani does not appear to have been dismissed as deputy mayor
Reports of Anuela Ristani’s dismissal should be read carefully. The document signed by Veliaj, according to the content that has been made public, does not explicitly dismiss her from the post of deputy mayor.
The act strips her of the mayor’s delegated powers and removes her from the municipality’s acting leadership, but without clarifying her full institutional status beyond that role. This detail also adds to the uncertainty at a time when the institution needs clear responsibility, not half-measures.
The country’s largest local institution, without a clear decision-making center
Tirana Municipality is the country’s largest local government unit, and its administrative weight makes this situation even more problematic. The structure operates with a broad administration, but none of its links has the legitimacy conferred by the vote to take over the institution’s daily political and executive leadership.
In this sense, the issue is not tied only to a name or a signature. It is about a vacuum of authority in a key institution, where daily decisions affect services, administration, and public accountability to citizens.
In the end, the situation at Tirana Municipality remains supported more by the mayor’s formal status than by any identifiable leadership of the institution.
So far, the latest document produces one clear fact: Ristani’s powers have been revoked, but no one has been put in place after her. For the capital, this is more than an administrative ambiguity.