VLORË, Albania — When Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner decided to invest in a luxury holiday development on Albania’s idyllic southern coast, he probably didn’t count on provoking a national uprising.
But Albanians, it turns out, weren’t crazy about wealthy foreign investors concreting over their natural treasures to build hotels for wealthy foreign holidaymakers.
The proposed 10,000-bed resort near a protected wildlife area that’s home to flamingos, turtles and one of Europe’s most pristine river deltas ignited perhaps the biggest popular demonstrations since the small Balkan country abandoned communism more than three decades ago.
Within two weeks the “flamingo revolution,” as it’s become known, has grown from a narrow environmental protest into a nationwide campaign directed at Albania’s entire ruling class.
Years of perceived government corruption, unchecked tourism, frustration over Albania’s economic development (it’s one of Europe’s poorest countries) and a general perception that the nation is being run for the wealthy few rather than the general population, have tipped many Albanians over the edge.
Demonstrators are now calling for the resignation and even imprisonment of Prime Minister Edi Rama and opposition leader and former premier Sali Berisha — the two longest-serving leaders since the fall of the communist regime in 1991.
“Young people and citizens here are not protesting only against Rama and Berisha, but against the whole system,” said Françeska Muço, a civil society activist who joined the demonstrations in Tirana, brandishing a flamingo poster while calling for both politicians to be jailed.
“This is a protest against all the system, of the system after the fall of the dictatorship, and all the negative models that they have normalized in this country,” added Muço.
Olsi Nika, an Albanian biologist who led the campaign to designate the Vjosa River as a national park, says the campaign goes far deeper than anger at foreign investors.
“It’s not about opposing Jared Kushner,” he says, arguing that the country has a long history of neglecting environmental standards, and claims political corruption is rife.
Rama himself has been strikingly unapologetic, telling POLITICO in an interview that foreign property developers like Kushner are more important to Albania than its own people.
“Foreigners are the first priority … because foreigners bring money to the country for Albanians,” the two-meter-tall former professional basketball player said in the expletive-sprinkled interview in early June — in which he also claimed the only reason foreign media was interested in the story was because of Kushner’s involvement.
“If it was not Jared, they would not give a shit about what is happening in Albania,” he said.
Rama’s provocative comments, made as the protests were already sweeping across the country, did nothing to lower the temperature.
“If he said that openly, this is one of the reasons why we are protesting,” said Redi Muçi, an opposition MP with left-wing party Lëvizja Bashkë. “Albania is a country that has become unlivable for Albanians,” he said, citing rising costs of living, the spread of Airbnbs in the capital Tirana, and resorts along the coast.
All the while, Albania’s ambition to join the European Union hangs in the balance. Long seen as a frontrunner alongside its northern neighbor Montenegro to join the EU by 2030, the country now risks seeing that goal slip out of reach as Brussels watches the political unrest and environmental destruction with concern.
The resort
Vlorë on Albania’s southern coast is the epicenter of a tourism boom for holidaymakers looking for Hellenic-style sun and sea at a fraction of Greek prices.
But the coast north of the town remains unspoilt. Flamingos stalk the shallows, turtles nest in the sand, and seals still surface along this wild stretch of coast. The Pishë Poro-Narta protected wildlife area is part of the river delta for the Vjosa, often referred to as Europe’s last wild river.
This idyllic scene, though, is at risk. A road now cuts through the land, police patrol the area, and cement foundations from removed fences mark the future site of the €1.4 billion luxury resort, that would carve a new “city” of 10,000 beds into one of Albania’s most biodiversity-rich areas.
While the project has become synonymous with Kushner and his wife Ivanka, daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump, some recent reports suggest Kushner’s investment group Affinity Partners has pulled out of the project. Affinity did not respond to requests for comment, and attempts to reach Kushner directly were unsuccessful.
Work on the resort was approved without any environmental impact assessment, which has become the heart of the dispute.
“We have a [turtle] nesting from this year that was destroyed by the machines. It’s just one kilometer from here,” said Konstandin Xhaho, an environmental conservationist, standing on top of a cliff overlooking the Vjosa-Narta protected wildlife area. He points toward a new white gravel road, stretching for more than a kilometer through the sand dunes, beach and forest below.
In late May, a protester was dragged across that same cliff by a security guard as locals and activists demanded that the barriers come down.
Scenes like that have exacerbated national unrest. Tens of thousands of Albanians have now taken to the streets, with protests in Tirana approaching their third week and copycat demonstrations taking place in other cities such as Shkodra, Durres, Lezhe and Gjirokaster. Albanians living in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and the U.K. have also organized protests. Demonstrators demand that the project be shelved and want Rama to resign after 13 years in power.
International media has also flocked to Albania to report on the unprecedented protests as Rama got into feuds on X with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders and the Iranian government.
Tourists or Albanians?
Rama’s insistence that Albania needs foreign investment reflects his government’s ambition to turn the country into the “Maldives of Europe” — a push that has already tripled visitor numbers in just a decade. Upwards of 12 million tourists visited the country last year, more than four times the country’s population. That massive increase has drawn praise from UN Tourism, a United Nations agency.
But the speed of development has come at a cost, as luxury tourism puts ever more stress on the environment while bringing little economic benefit for its citizens, according to demonstrators, opposition politicians, and civil societyl society. Young Albanians are leaving the country at the highest rates in Europe.
“I am a strong believer in a sustainable model of development,” Silvio Gonzato, the EU’s ambassador to Albania, told POLITICO. “So it breaks my heart sometimes to see the things that have been done because I recognize the same stupid mistakes that we made in Italy, in other parts of Europe, maybe in Romania,” he said.
“We’ve been advocating that you cannot, again, ask member states to grant you a 10-year [exemption] from EU rules in the environmental sector and then pursue a model of development that aggravates the problems,” said Gonzato.
Albania has passed controversial laws on strategic investments and protected areas that environmental organizations and demonstrators say were designed to boost the tourism sector and clear the way for projects like Kushner’s. The EU has warned that if Tirana continues in this direction, its chances of closing the environmental chapter of accession talks could move further out of reach.
Gabriel Schwaderer, executive director of EuroNatur, said the government’s timeline had fueled suspicions that Tirana was trying to push through as many tourism projects as possible before EU accession forces it to comply with stricter environmental rules. “I would very much love to say and think differently, but at the moment that is what the government’s actions are suggesting,” he said.
In Vlorë, Kushner’s resort plans are not the only controversial projects. Further inland, across the lagoon, Vlorë Airport has already become a symbol of the same development model: projects pushed through in sensitive ecosystems amid allegations of opaque procedures and favoritism. The airport was set to open in 2025, but has been delayed and is now entangled in a legal dispute between shareholders and the Albanian state.
Kushner and his wife also have plans to turn the country’s only island, Sazan, into a luxury resort. But Agron Shehaj, who sits in his pick-up truck with a beach chair after going for a swim, says that no one in Vlorë welcomes any of their plans.
“We want nature like this, because this is how we enjoy it,” Shehaj points to Zvernec and Sazan. “You have the possibility tomorrow to go by boat to Sazan. If resorts are built, we won’t be able to enter.”
The fate of a nation
In Tirana, protesters call it the most important moment in Albania since the fall of communism in 1991. Their posters and chants call for a new Albania led by people of all ages and social classes, trying to reclaim a country still scarred by its rocky transition from a reclusive communist dictatorship under Enver Hoxha to an open European democracy.
“I think in the last 30 years, it has been the biggest moment for us,” said Emir Leqini, a 21-year-old protester from Tirana studying computer science. “Because it is the first time that we are not afraid to protest, we can raise our voice, and we can ask for what’s ours.”
He said the protests won’t end until Prime Minister Rama resigns. “We won’t go if Rama doesn’t go. He can decide by himself if he wants to go. But we won’t go anywhere until he leaves the prime minister post. Really simple,” he said.
The number of protesters has grown day by day, from the first demonstration on June 1. The movement is no longer only about the Pishë Poro-Narta protected area, but also about 35 years of frustration with Albania’s transition away from communism — which has been dominated by two leaders: Rama and his predecessor Berisha.
Berisha, leader of the conservative Democratic Party, led Albania on and off from the end of communism until 2013, and is seen as the father of democratic Albania. But he too is now the target of demonstrators, frustrated with a post-communist system they say has delivered decades of corruption, low wages, and is driving Albanians out of the country.
“This doesn’t disturb me,” Berisha said of calls for him to be imprisoned in an interview with POLITICO. “You always have to live with it. Leaves should not block you from seeing the trunk. The trunk is they are asking to remove Rama.”
Berisha, who was barred from entering the United States in 2021 during the Biden administration over what Washington called “significant corruption” and later banned by the U.K. over alleged links to organized crime, told POLITICO that the U.S. restriction had been lifted on Thursday.
Berisha denies any wrongdoing and claims the sanctions were politically motivated, linking them to Rama’s relationship with billionaire investor George Soros and his son, Alex Soros, as part of what he described as an effort to remove him from politics.
“It came directly from Edi Rama and George Soros. Both of them lobbied against me,” Berisha claimed.
Soros, a prominent liberal and donor to the U.S. Democratic Party, has long been a target of right-wing groups.
Berisha said he opposes the Rama government’s environmental policy, but stopped short of supporting the protesters entirely. “It is not our protest, we have not called it,” he said.
Jorida Tabaku, an MP and a popular face in Berisha’s Democratic Party, has also been vocal about Albania’s destruction of nature in its pursuit of a bigger tourism industry.
“They’re practically killing the competitive advantage that Albania has in tourism — small-scale land, virgin beaches, nice places which have not been ruined. They are putting concrete everywhere,” Tabaku told POLITICO, urging the EU to put more pressure on Albania.
“But this is not an issue only of environment; it is also an issue of competition. They cannot award the contract directly to one person because they’re close to the prime minister and do not have a proper process,” said Tabaku.
Project or no project?
By some accounts, the pressure from the EU over the Pishë Poro-Narta nature reserve seems to have already prompted action.
The European Commission claimed they were told by Albania’s environment minister, Sofjan Jaupaj, that “the Minister committed that the construction works have been suspended and that a comprehensive Environmental Impact Assessment will be carried out for the project in consultation with civil society.”
However, both Jaupaj and Rama deny what the Commission was told.
“During an online meeting on 26th of May, with representatives of the European Commission, Minister Jaupaj informed the Commission that no final project proposal has been submitted and construction activities have not commenced as no construction permit has been approved,” a ministry spokesperson told POLITICO.
Rama, however, continues to publicly insist that the project will continue, a statement seemingly at odds with his claim that no project exists.
But the evidence speaks for itself upon visiting the protected area, where the cement foundations from the fences that were removed still remain, along with a road built to allow construction to begin.
Rama claims the path was made for the community there. But Joni Vorpsi, an ecologist at Albania’s oldest environmental NGO, PPNEA, is in disbelief over Rama’s comments, asking “What community?”
“We won’t have any more protected areas if … everyone has the money to develop their property in the protected areas,” said Vorpsi, while trekking to the top of a hill near the proposed resort.
From the summit the wild Sazan Island — where the Kushners have plans to build another resort — is visible in the distance, still unspoilt.
But Vorpsi fears scenes like this won’t last unless Albania’s government changes direction. “We will have only cities,” he warns.