In Albania, Flamingos expose the gap

Mind the gap. That’s the key takeaway from the European Commission’s Albania 2025 report, which the European Parliament approved last week.

Both the Commission and Parliament found myriad ways to highlight the space between candidate Albania’s laws, policies, and strategies on the one side, and their implementation on the other.

In that gap, flamingos roam. The mass protests in Albania have entered their fourth week with no sign of losing steam. The government’s efforts to label them as pro-Greek, pro-Serb, pro-Iranian, or anti-Semitic have not stemmed the rising tide. Neither has the use of vulgarity or a bizarrely narcissistic song.

Dubbed the “Flamingo Revolution” after the birds at risk from a luxury tourist development, the protesters focus their ire on what they view as a corrupt political elite that turns public land into private gain.

The protesters live in a country with an EU-supported justice reform on the one hand and slipping Transparency International scores on the other; with a new anti-corruption strategy and special prosecutors on one hand and a ruling party shielding high-level officials on the other; with mechanisms to combat money laundering on one hand and large-scale construction linked to laundering on the other.

Albania’s accession challenge is no longer legislative — it is a deficit of political will that cuts across the system. One exception jumps out: Albania’s security and defence policy, where the Commission praised the country’s “full alignment,” including on sanctions against Russia.

Alignment in the external arena comes as no surprise. It fits a pattern since communism fell 36 years ago: Albanian governments can play nice abroad and rule as they want at home.

Ironically, one area where legislation and implementation have met is the tourist project involving Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and a murky mix of others. After extending the 2015 Law on Strategic Investments and amending the Law on Protected Areas, bulldozers ripped into the dunes at Zvërnec on the coast, sparking the current protests, especially after guards beat a protester and dragged him across the sand.

Last week’s EP resolution rightly took this into account. It criticised the Law on Strategic Investments for “enabling accelerated permitting procedures and reduced environmental scrutiny,” called for a repeal of the 2024 amendments to the Law on Protected Areas, and demanded a moratorium on new permitting and construction within protected zones.

Prime Minister Edi Rama quickly obliged and promised that the project will undergo a proper environmental assessment. This would not have happened without the protesters and the international attention they generated, which has scratched Rama’s shiny international veneer.

But the EU should not be satisfied with a promise of environmental review. The critical connection still needs to be made between this development and the gaps the Commission has identified on the rule of law, corruption and organised crime.

Consider that the most trusted institution in Albania today is not the government, parliament, or any political party but the special anti-corruption prosecutors’ office that the Commission rightly praises — known as SPAK. This month, SPAK issued 20 arrest warrants and seized more than €100 million in assets as it tracks drug money flowing into construction projects, including the project with Kushner and Trump.

This is the core of what the protesters want: not a halt to tourist projects, but developments and government that respect the law.

The EU has been moving quickly to integrate Albania, largely for geo-strategic reasons — in that sense, Vladimir Putin has given Edi Rama a helpful boost. But overlooking the people now filling Albania’s streets, calling for transparency and accountability, will undermine EU credibility and betray the democratic values the Union claims to represent.

The protesters are marching fast. The EU would do well to keep up.

Fred Abrahams is co-Director of the Aryeh Neier Center for Justice and author of Modern Albania: from Dictatorship to Democracy (NYU Press).