Gresa Hasa for Journal Issue 14 of European Alternatives<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What began in late May as a small environmental struggle in the protected area of Zv\u00ebrnec, within the Vjosa-Narta Lagoon in western Albania, has since evolved into a broad-based mass movement\u2014one without precedent in Albania\u2019s post-communist history. Its scale and breadth are particularly striking in a country where, over the past 35 years since the fall of the communist dictatorship in 1991, sustained forms of mass political mobilization have remained relatively rare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The immediate trigger was a luxury tourism and real-estate development<\/a> planned for Zv\u00ebrnec and Sazan Island, backed by Jared Kushner\u2019s Affinity Partners and Ivanka Trump. The Albanian government granted Kushner\u2019s entity strategic-investor status<\/a> despite serious and persistent concerns over the project\u2019s environmental impact and legal basis. But the controversy quickly proved to be about much more than one development project as it touched a deeper nerve: the growing sense that, in today\u2019s Albania, public institutions are increasingly being mobilized to facilitate private interests rather than to protect the public good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initially, the protests involved no more than a dozen local residents and environmental activists. Having accidentally discovered that construction work had already begun in the area, they gathered to demand that the works be halted and that the government explain how the project had been allowed to proceed. Instead, they were met with violence. Private security guards employed by the Kastrati Group, one of Albania\u2019s most powerful oligarchic business conglomerates and a domestic actor in the project, attacked the protesters<\/a>. The violence unfolded in full view of the state police, which stood by and refused to intervene\u2014and, more disturbingly, appeared to shield the attackers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although the mainstream media largely ignored the incident, footage of the confrontation spread rapidly across social media, triggering a wave of mass public outrage. For many Albanians, what happened in Zv\u00ebrnec was immediately recognizable, not as an isolated incident, but as yet another manifestation of a deeper pattern of semi-authoritarian governance, in which Prime Minister Edi Rama increasingly appears to act less as the custodian of public power than as its proprietor: deciding who gets access to the country\u2019s land and resources, which parts of the national territory can be handed over to private interests, and on what terms\u2014all while treating public consent, and institutional checks as obstacles rather than democratic obligations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Zv\u00ebrnec therefore became emblematic of the convergence of state capture and a crony-capitalist socioeconomic model, in which political power is concentrated at the top while public assets are systematically opened to politically connected private capital. The state thus becomes the broker of privatization, while citizens are left with ever fewer means to contest decisions made in their name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A parallel can be drawn with Rama\u2019s November 2023 agreement<\/a> with Italy\u2019s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, through which he personally<\/em> committed Albania to granting Italy extraterritorial privileges to establish Italian-administered migrant detention facilities in northwestern Albania. The agreement was negotiated with no transparency, without parliamentary debate or broader public deliberation. The same logic can be traced across various disputes over public land and the country\u2019s natural and cultural heritage: in Rrjoll<\/a>, on Albania\u2019s northwestern Adriatic coast, as in Zv\u00ebrnec, confrontations have emerged between local residents, activists, private developers, and the state police after the government expropriated local landowners and granted a private company strategic-investor status for a 147-hectare tourism project in the Rana e Hedhun and Velipoj\u00eb coastal areas, despite the project\u2019s location within an environmentally protected area. Likewise, the demolition of the historic National Theatre building in Tirana in 2020<\/a>, despite sustained public protests and fierce opposition from civil society, became another defining example of the state\u2019s ability to override collective claims to a cultural heritage site in the name of development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is emerging across these cases is not simply a series of controversial development decisions, but a recurring mode of governing territory and public resources. Whether the issue is a protected ecosystem, coastal land, a cultural heritage site, or even an agreement directly affecting the country\u2019s sovereignty, the pattern is strikingly similar: decisions with major consequences for the public are concentrated in the hands of the country\u2019s political leadership, private interests are granted privileged access to public assets, and those who challenge these arrangements encounter weak institutional safeguards and, at times, direct coercion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n During what has come to be known as the Flamingo Revolution\u2014named after the flamingos that inhabit the Vjosa-Narta Lagoon and, along with hundreds of other bird species<\/a>, are threatened from the Kushner-Trump-backed development\u2014the regime has employed a range of tactics to intimidate and discredit the movement. These have included attacking peaceful protesters with teargas and using physical force<\/a>; arresting, publicly bullying, and intimidating individual activists and ordinary citizens; as well as waging an increasingly aggressive information war<\/a> aimed at falsely portraying the protests as externally orchestrated<\/a> rather than as a genuine expression of domestic public discontent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is why the language of investment and modernization matters politically. It does more than provide a rationale for opening public assets to private capital; it also frames dissent as an impediment to development and thereby legitimizes its suppression. Political power determines who gains access to economic opportunities and public assets, while economic power, in turn, becomes increasingly embedded in the exercise of political authority. The result is a political economy in which the distinction between public and private interest becomes progressively harder to sustain. What is ultimately at stake, therefore, is not simply who owns a particular piece of land or who gets to build a particular resort, but who has the authority to define the public interest, who gets to decide what belongs to the public, and\u2014most fundamentally\u2014who gets to determine the country\u2019s future in its name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n