Brussels demands Albania act ‘without delay’ over controversial resort development

Albania will have to comply with the bloc’s environmental legislation if its EU accession is to proceed, the European Commission said on Tuesday when asked about a controversial resort development involving the Trump family.

Thousands of Albanians protested last week against a planned luxury resort project backed by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner on the site of the Vjosa-Narta lagoon, a unique Mediterranean wetland in the south of the country.

The project would threaten over 70 endangered species and more than 200 migratory species, including flamingos, Mediterranean monk seals and nesting sea turtles, conservationists warn.

“We expect the Albanian authorities to act without delay,” Guillaume Mercier, a Commission spokesperson told reporters on Tuesday.

Alignment

Countries applying for EU membership are required to align with EU legislation and standards, which are incorporated into the negotiation ‘chapters’ that accession candidates must work through.

“As part of the closing benchmark for the Chapter 27 on Environment and Climate Change, Albania is expected to align fully with EU legislation in this area, including the Birds and Habitats Directives, and also the 2015 legislation on strategic investment,” the EU official said.

The Birds and Habitats Directives are the EU’s core biodiversity laws, applying in particular to the Natura 2000 network of protected areas. Albania’s 2015 Law on Strategic Investments fast-tracks major projects, but the EU maintains they must be implemented in line with European environmental rules.

Albania’s environment minister, Sofjan Jaupaj, has reportedly committed to halting construction and ordered a comprehensive environmental impact assessment after the Commission expressed concerns about the project’s potential shortcomings, Mercier said.

The outcry arose after the campaign group BirdLife and a score of fellow NGOs observed bulldozers and barriers along the outer edge of the lagoon. These were subsequently removed.

‘International spectacle’

On 6 June, Prime Minister Edi Rama reacted to the international outcry in a social media post, asserting that no building permit had been issued, no construction underway, and that there was “not even a final design yet”.

“How could a local protest involving a few thousand people be transformed into an international spectacle?” Rama wrote.

The prime minister appears to have no intention of blocking a development he says would “transform Albania into the most attractive high-end tourism destination in this part of the world”.

Moreover, he said, it would have a “a net positive” environmental impact and “result in approximately 25% more trees and green space than exists today”.

In February 2024, an amendment to the Albanian law on protected areas opened the door to luxury resort construction in zones that had previously been strictly protected.

Anouk Puymartin of BirdLife told Euractiv that the Vlora International Airport had already been built within the Vjosa-Narta nature protection area.

The exemption allows certain tourism projects to deviate from the requirement to “maintain the land in its natural state, preserve … species in order to ensure ecological stability and biodiversity”.

The European Commission had raised its concerns about this amendment as early as September 2025, in the European Union’s common position on Albania’s accession to the EU.

(rh, aw)