Written by Tea Zyberaj. Tea Zyberaj will shortly begin an MA in European Transformation and Integration at the College of Europe in Tirana, supported by a full scholarship from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Enlargement and the Eastern Neighbourhood. She previously completed a Schuman traineeship at the European Parliament and holds an MSc in European Politics and Policy from UCL and a BSc in International Relations from the University of Surrey.
At a time when Albania is rapidly advancing its EU accession bid, thousands of Albanians have taken to the streets of Tirana to demand that their government uphold the standards and rights associated with membership. Under the slogan “Albania is not for sale”, protesters have challenged the political establishment’s support for multibillion-dollar coastal developments linked to Jared Kushner on Sazan Island and near the Vjosa-Narta wetlands. What began as local opposition to environmental degradation has evolved into a broader movement known as the Flamingo Revolution. Demonstrators have placed the country’s political direction under renewed scrutiny, exposing the tension between rapid formal progress in the accession process and persistent concerns over how European standards are implemented in practice.
A contested model of European modernisation
Albania’s February 2024 amendments to the Law on Protected Areas (Law No. 21/2024) laid the groundwork for the current unrest by permitting large-scale tourism and construction activities in areas that had previously benefited from stronger environmental safeguards. The amendments were followed by plans for two high-profile coastal developments associated with Jared Kushner and a wider group of international investors: a luxury resort on Sazan Island, which subsequently received strategic investor status, and a separate development at Zvërnec, within the Vjosa-Narta Protected Landscape, whose ownership and approval structure remained considerably less transparent. The government promoted them as opportunities to attract international capital and establish Albania as a major high-end tourism destination, situating them within a wider vision in which accession, foreign investment and economic transformation formed part of the same project of national modernisation.
That narrative came under increasing strain in spring 2026, when fencing, road works and heavy machinery appeared near the proposed development site at Zvërnec. Although the resort proposal had been publicly announced in 2024, little information had been made available about its approval process, environmental procedures or the ownership of the land concerned. The appearance of preparatory works therefore suggested that implementation had advanced considerably further than the public record had indicated. The situation raised a broader question about the terms on which the government’s development agenda was being pursued, and whether the drive for investment could be reconciled with environmental safeguards, transparent decision-making and meaningful public participation.
A political challenge with a European dimension
For many Albanians, the controversy has come to symbolise a system in which national laws can be bypassed and protected public land reshaped around the interests of powerful investors. Opposition to construction in Vjosa-Narta soon developed into allegations of corruption among Albania’s political elite, opaque administrative decision-making and weak institutional oversight. Protesters have since demanded Rama’s resignation, a temporary non-partisan government and constitutional, electoral and institutional reform, presenting these measures as the basis for a new social contract between citizens and the state.
Longstanding grievances over pensions, healthcare, wages, rents, the cost of living and continuing depopulation have widened the movement’s reach. Set against the political attention devoted to high-profile foreign investment, these concerns have made the question of who benefits from Albania’s economic development central to the protests.
These demands amount to a wider critique of concentrated power and limited accountability, particularly where decisions taken in the name of national development cannot be effectively scrutinised, contested or reversed. Protesters have also placed that critique within Albania’s European trajectory. Banners asking “Europe, can you hear us?” bring Brussels directly into the political conversation, calling on the EU to take seriously concerns over environmental protection, government accountability and the rule of law. Because these demands closely correspond to the standards Albania is expected to meet through accession, protesters are using the membership process both as a benchmark against which to assess the exercise of power at home and as a source of leverage through which to demand reform. In doing so, they expose the gap between formal alignment and implementation, while challenging the predominantly government-driven character of the accession process.
Between scrutiny and support
The European Commission adopted a cautious public response to the protests, despite the clear overlap between the demonstrators’ demands and shortcomings it had already identified in Albania. Its 2025 country report found “no progress” under Chapter 27, citing poor-quality environmental impact assessments, low public participation, limited enforcement and an unravelling of protected-area safeguards following the 2024 amendments. Yet, as unrest intensified, Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos cited assurances from Tirana that a full environmental impact assessment would be conducted and that European standards would be respected. For protesters, however, the controversy concerned precisely whether such assurances were sufficient in the absence of transparency, consultation and effective enforcement.
The European Parliament took a more direct position. Its resolution of 17 June, approved by 483 votes in favour, 103 against and 70 abstentions, called for the repeal of provisions incompatible with the EU environmental acquis and for an immediate moratorium on construction and development within protected areas until compliance with EU nature-protection standards had been ensured. Visiting parliamentarians likewise argued that economic investment could not override environmental protection, public participation or the rule of law. Their criticism of the government was accompanied by a markedly different assessment of the demonstrators, whom they described as citizens defending European values and demanding the accountability that accession is expected to strengthen.
The debate has acquired greater significance as Albania begins to move towards the provisional closure of negotiating chapters. On 14 July, it reached that milestone, completing negotiations on three chapters and consolidating its position as an enlargement frontrunner. Yet the Zvërnec dispute exposes the risk that this narrative, together with the EU goodwill surrounding it, may overshadow weaknesses already documented in the Union’s own assessments. In an accession process conducted predominantly through the executive, restrained public criticism may also reinforce the government’s control over how European integration is presented and pursued domestically. Zvërnec is therefore a test not only of Albania’s compliance, but of whether the EU is prepared to exercise its leverage when European standards conflict with powerful political and economic interests.
Beyond formal alignment
The Flamingo Revolution has exposed a deeper disagreement over what Europeanisation should mean for Albania. The government has largely presented accession, foreign investment and luxury tourism as mutually reinforcing elements of national modernisation. Protesters have advanced a more demanding interpretation, in which integration must also constrain political discretion, preserve environmental safeguards and give citizens meaningful influence over decisions taken in the name of development.
Albania’s accession bid benefits from genuine momentum and favourable geopolitical circumstances. Yet speed alone cannot compensate for weaknesses in implementation or for a process driven predominantly from the executive. Without broader political and societal ownership, rapid progress risks producing formal compliance while leaving existing patterns of concentrated power largely intact.
The European Union must therefore match its support for Albania’s accession trajectory with sustained scrutiny of how reforms operate in practice. This requires communicating shortcomings with greater clarity, applying environmental conditionality consistently and ensuring greater scope for actors beyond the government to shape and scrutinise the process. Strategic investments and major infrastructure projects are especially important tests, because they reveal whether transparency, public participation and enforcement endure when politically and economically valuable interests are at stake.
