Political activities

He was first elected MP in the 2005 general election and then for two other legislatures successively as a member of the parliamentary group of the Socialist Party.^[1][2]

He is the political leader for the Socialist Party in Fier.^[3]

In 2020, Balla proposed a measure to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism and promise to fight anti-Jewish prejudice.^[4] The measure was accepted unanimously by the Parliament of Albania, and Albania became the first Muslim country to formally adopt the definition.^[4]

Plagiarism assertion

In October 2018, many Albanian public figures and politicians were alleged to have been part of a plagiarism scandal, involving their Masters and Ph.D. theses. The assertions were begun by Taulant Muka, a young epidemiologist educated in the Netherlands.^[5] The assertions sparked nationwide protests from students of public universities, leading to a vetting for all academic titles held by public figures, state officials, and politicians. The PhD thesis of Balla, entitled The Reform of Decision-Making System in the European Union, supervised by Professor George Poede at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iaşi, Romania, was named in the scandal.^[6][7] In 2019, following an accusation of plagiarism, the university forwarded the charge to the consultative body of the ministry of national education that investigates such accusations.^[8][9]