Albania Trump resort protests: MEPs accuse Rama of fast-tracking resort as clashes rage
MEPs have accused Albania of using 'sneaky' practices to fast-track a Trump-linked luxury resort in the Vjosa-Narta landscape, as violent clashes over Edi Rama protests grip Tirana for a sixth consecutive day, fuelling the Albania Trump resort protests.
Albania Trump resort protests: MEPs accuse Rama of fast-tracking resort as clashes rage
Tirana in flames after six days of clashes
Tirana is in its sixth consecutive day of violent clashes, and on Monday municipal workers began removing paving stones while shopkeepers secured their premises with metal sheeting. Students now leading the unrest have fought pitched battles with riot police, and ministerial buildings, banks and businesses have been set ablaze, attacked and looted.
- Protestors set fire to a police station during the clashes in the capital.
- Riot police responded with rubber bullets and tear gas as they attempted to disperse the crowds.
- Students have vowed to continue demonstrating until the socialist leader Edi Rama resigns - a demand he has resolutely refused to meet.
Rama faces mounting criticism for failing to address demonstrators who had long opposed the Trump-linked resort project peacefully, even as he pledged to listen to the voices of young people taking to the streets.
MEPs: 'sneaky' practices before EU rules apply
Dutch MEP Tineke Strik, a Greens member who led a European parliament fact-finding mission to Albania in June, accused Rama of inflaming the situation by doggedly pursuing plans championed by the US president's son-in-law Jared Kushner. She said the government is rushing to create facts on the ground before it is bound by EU standards, and intends to finalise procedures before being legally bound by them.
According to Strik, the government submitted an environmental package to the EU Commission without repealing the law that opened the area to investors, and is conducting a fast-track impact assessment which, if done more comprehensively, could never lead to the conclusion that the construction is allowed. She said Albania is still trying to help realise what she called the megalomaniacal luxury resort plans of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
Such sneaky and disloyal practices should be strongly criticised by the EU.
Strik said that if the Albanian government had taken the Flamingo Revolution - the protest movement - seriously, we wouldn't be here, adding that the students are voicing the frustration of people who feel that they haven't been listened to. She also said she was surprised by Rama's enthusiasm for such a large-scale tourism complex in an area so fragile, and accused him of serving his own interests and Kushner's rather than those of the environment and the Albanian people.
10,000 villas on protected land
Up to 10,000 villas are planned along a stretch of coast that enjoyed environmental protection until the government passed a contentious law. That law opened parts of the Vjosa-Narta landscape - an area surrounding the last intact delta system in the Mediterranean - to strategic investors.
Construction workers broke ground in May, igniting protests that would spread nationwide after ancient dunes and forest were destroyed for access roads in the nature reserve. In June, the European parliament called for the legislation to be repealed in the EU candidate country, saying it threatened environmental standards that are non-negotiable conditions of accession.
The stakes are high for Rama's European ambitions. Re-elected for a historic fourth term last year, he is on a mission to get the Balkan state into the 27-member bloc by 2030, and Albania, a frontrunner in the enlargement process, hopes to wrap up accession talks by the end of 2027. Rama recently described the scientific results of an environmental impact study as key to the €4bn project going ahead.
Rama and Kushner defend the project
Rama told a tourism forum in Brussels this month that the development would be a gamechanger for a nation that had been the North Korea of Europe before the fall of its Stalinist regime in the 1990s.
If construction goes ahead this will be decided not in the streets but by science
That was his message to the forum, and in a social media address on Sunday he asked Albanians to think very clearly: do they want this, do they want that, or do they want the EU? He has said Albania aims to offer a high-end destination highlighting nature and a much stronger economy for Albanians.
On 8 October, Kushner said the venture's single goal is to build to the top design and environmental benchmarks and hand back this part of Albania in a greener, more biodiverse and environmentally stronger state. Teams of contractors charged with carrying out the impact study have already been observed surveying the site. Responding to Strik, Rama said the violence in Tirana is very real and urged her to condemn it rather than imagine environmental plots that do not exist, referencing Russian spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
Environmentalists say science already spoke
Environmentalists, who initially spearheaded the protests, countered this week that science had already spoken. Aleksander Trajce of PPNEA, Albania's oldest conservation group, said it spoke when experts from the faculty of science at Tirana University elected to protect this incredible landscape in 2004, based on sound scientific data.
Reopening the discussion is not only disingenuous but clearly a way to justify construction that should not be happening at all.
Trajce said a proper environmental impact assessment would take at least two years, because it needs several seasons across several years to examine species and biodiversity. He also said Albanians are angry at the EU's lacklustre stance, arguing that if it had intervened earlier and told Rama to stop, the peaceful phase of the protest movement would not have escalated.
The standoff continues on both fronts: students have vowed to keep demonstrating until Rama resigns, a demand he refuses to meet, while private contractors continue mapping the area for the fast-track impact study.
