Facts Beyond the Murky Channels of the Internet, or a Reality Check for All Who Have Maligned the Albanian State

By Edi Rama Prime Minister of the Republic of Albania

SAZAN ISLAND is state property, which has never been intended, nor even sought, for sale.

This state land would be made available, so as to turn it into a top-tier tourist destination, through the state’s participation in the investment itself. On the basis of a detailed negotiation process, the state will hold shares as an involved party, while the island will remain at all times the property of the Albanian state.

Negotiations are still open, and no final agreement has yet been reached. In parallel, the investors have continued their work on the development studies, but they have not yet submitted the architectural project or the relevant environmental study.

All of the above speaks for itself about the dignified and professional approach of the Albanian government in defending the interests of the state and of the public. The investors, for their part, have shown full respect toward our institutions and a thoroughly cooperative spirit. Not a single square meter of Albania has gone up for sale, no one has cut any deal behind the people’s back, and the Republic of Albania has been represented with unquestionable dignity in a negotiation that is not yet closed.

THE ZVËRNEC INVESTMENT ZONE is private property, registered in the cadastre for many years. The development plan for that zone is the result of an agreement between the investors and the owners holding the property titles in the cadastral register, exactly as in all the countless cases of private property development. The investors bought the properties from them, and are currently the legitimate owners of the land in question.

As sometimes happens along the Albanian coast, the zone also has other claimants. In this case, not one party but two. On one side are two families claiming the property as old owners; on the other are many families claiming it as former members of the communist agricultural cooperative. All of them have taken their claims to court.

But in the meantime, under Albanian law and under any law in the world on private property, the claims of third parties cannot halt either the development or the sale of the property by the entities that have it registered in the cadastre. The registrations in this zone were made long before this governing majority came into office.

It happens that SPAK had an open investigation into one of the sellers of the property, in connection with a separate matter. At the prosecutors’ request, and by the judges’ decision, the sum paid by the investors to buy that part of the property was executed as a transaction in the investors’ favor, but rather than passing to the seller it was placed in a frozen bank account.

The seller will not be able to withdraw that sum before the investigation closes, and should justice determine that the sum is not owed to him, it will then be seized and pass into the state’s compensation fund for property owners. This means that if, and only when, a court rules in favor of one or more of the claimants to the property in question, they will be able to draw from this fund the sum that is due to them.

All of the above shows clearly that the purchase and sale of the property at Zvërnec has no connection whatsoever to the government, but is simply the most elementary relationship between private parties, in a system where the right to private property is a fundamental human right. It also shows clearly that the judicial bodies acted not only in full independence, but in the interest of the state and in defense of the right to private property, both when they judged the investors’ transaction correct and when they decided to place the sum in a frozen account.

INTEREST IN THE ZVËRNEC INVESTMENT arrived officially in 2024, when the investors submitted a masterplan to the National Territorial Council, a plan that was also made public on the program Opinion by one of the company’s architects.

The masterplan was reviewed at the meeting of 25 September 2024. The National Territorial Council did not approve it, but instead required substantial revisions, setting the bar at the height of ambition for an exemplary development for Tourism Albania 2030 in the European Union.

The requirements are documented: a reduction in the intensity of the development, and the provision of special measures to protect the lagoon, the surrounding habitats, and the environmentally sensitive parts of the development zone.

A year and several months later, on 30 March 2026, the investors returned before the National Territorial Council with a new draft masterplan reflecting the parameters the Council had required. At that meeting the Council approved the development permit, which is not a construction permit and does not authorize the start of construction works, but opens the way to the project preparation phase. Meanwhile, for the formal issuance and entry into force of that permit, the legal and technical conditions must be met, and the work of the architectural team involved continues to that end.

It must be borne in mind that, in order to obtain the construction permit and the authorization to begin construction works, the developer must, after the development permit is formally issued, submit a detailed architectural project together with the necessary technical documentation.

The permit to fence the private property for development, granted by decision of 29 April 2026, is part of the legal procedures issued at the developer’s request, so as to enable on-site measurements, monitoring activities for the environmental study, and other preliminary, preparatory measures that are indispensable to the technical documentation of the construction permit.

In parallel with the territorial planning procedures, the developer has officially submitted a request for an Environmental Impact Assessment, for which the relevant state structures have been engaged in accordance with the law.

After the completion of the screening and scoping phases, the responsible state authority for the environment decided, on 15 May 2026, that the project must undergo not merely an ordinary environmental impact assessment, but an In-Depth Environmental Impact Assessment.

Consequently, before the final documentation for the project’s implementation is approved, and before any request for a construction permit is even examined, the developer is obliged to prepare and submit an In-Depth Environmental Impact Assessment.

That assessment must analyze in detail, and with unquestionable professional competence, the possible impacts of the development on biodiversity, habitats, ecosystems, landscape values, and other elements, in keeping with Albanian environmental legislation and with the relevant standards, legislation, and regulatory framework of the European Union.

In this particular case, the In-Depth Environmental Impact Assessment has been required to examine, among other things, the possible effects of the project on protected habitats and species, on ecological connectivity, on the coastal and lagoon ecosystems, on the integrity of the landscape, and on long-term environmental sustainability.

The findings and recommendations that emerge from the In-Depth Environmental Impact Assessment, together with the opinion that the relevant authorities form regarding the quality of that assessment, will serve as a point of reference for every further decision connected to the progress of the project.

The story that the protected status of this development zone was removed, so as to clear the way for the investment, is one of the greatest untruths inflated beyond all imagination against this colossal investment for Albania.

And of course, the claims raised upon this untruth have unjustly wounded the indisputable moral, legal, and professional integrity that the state and the Albanian administration have shown throughout the entire handling of this investment, one with a potentially extraordinary impact on Albania’s own Gross National Product.

The “Pishë Poro and Nartë” zone has never changed its category as a Protected Landscape, ever since 2004, when it was first declared as such. It has therefore been, and remains, a protected area, classified as Category V under the IUCN, that is, a Protected Landscape. This is also specified clearly in the Council of Ministers Decision of 25 September 2024, which absolutely did not change the status of that zone, but only specified its precise defining criteria.

This zone has no connection whatsoever with the Vjosa delta, however much the confusion is deliberately stirred up, as if construction would reach it. That is impossible, because the Vjosa, along all 480 kilometers of its course, together with its tributaries and its mouth on the Adriatic, holds the highest level of protection, National Park, Category I, and is now part of the ecosystems of the UNESCO Biosphere.

Our system of protected areas rests on the international classification framework of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which applies restrictions of differing levels to each category of protected area. The law “On Protected Areas,” adopted in 2017 as the first law to incorporate the European directives in the field of biodiversity, fully integrated these categories into the national legal framework.

According to the criteria set by the international framework, Category V is not a zone “without development,” but a protected landscape in which biodiversity, natural values, and human activity must coexist in a harmonious and sustainable manner.

The 2017 law has not been touched by any amendment of 2024 in its express provision, written in line with the European standard, that a Protected Landscape may include settlements and other forms of land use.

More concretely, point 4 of Article 20, written back in 2017, establishes that activities bringing changes in land use, including construction works, wastewater treatment plants for farms, highways, navigable canals, urban developments, and other infrastructural or development projects, may be carried out only after the relevant permit has been obtained from the National Territorial Council.

All of the above says a great deal, which all those would do well not to forget the next time they malign our country: all those who, in Albanian and especially in foreign languages, mistreated Albania and its government before the world with comments, chronicles, articles, and every sort of output from the deranged eruption of the social channels, as though these were synonyms for a Banana Republic, without a state, without institutions, without a flag, and without dignity.

The entire flow of facts in this story shows the world that Albania is not a country without a master; that the Albanian institutions function with integrity, with professionalism, and without any complex toward foreign investors; that the government of Albania leads Albania with vision and with dignity, as the epochal transformation and the renewed image of our country attest, despite the wholly undeserved mudslinging of these days, whether from the collective anti-Trump hysteria or from the very vices of technology’s new age, in which the central place of facts has, in recent weeks, been taken by a fabricated spectacle of rumor, fabrication, accusation, and denigration that echoed everywhere in the name of a shameful pseudo anti-corruption.

WHAT IS NOW AWAITED:

The completion of the documentation for the formal issuance of the development permit;
The application for the construction permit, with a detailed project and all the relevant technical documentation;
The document of the Detailed Environmental Impact Assessment;
The analysis by the relevant authorities of the findings and recommendations of that Assessment;
The study of the project’s environmental impacts on biodiversity, habitats, ecosystems, landscape values, and other environmental components;
A guarantee of the submitted project’s compliance with Albanian environmental legislation and with the environmental standards, legislation, and regulations of the European Union.
THE FACTS ARE ABOVE.

WHOEVER TRIES TO DRAG ALBANIA BACK DOWN AGAIN WILL NEVER SUCCEED.

ALBANIA WILL NOT BE FRIGHTENED BY GREAT DREAMS.

THE ALBANIAN PEOPLE WILL NOT COWER BEFORE ANY GREAT CHALLENGE.

TOGETHER WE WILL MAKE EUROPEAN ALBANIA THE PRINCESS OF MEDITERRANEAN TOURISM, AND WE WILL SHOW ALL THOSE WHO MALIGNED OUR STATE AS VICIOUSLY AS COULD BE THAT ALBANIA TAKES ITS EPOCHAL TRANSFORMATION VERY SERIOUSLY.

For the original publication in Albanian CLICK HERE