Change font size:
As Albania faces growing protests over protected coastal areas, a draft government decision to transfer Sazan Island from the Defence Ministry raises new questions over transparency, public assets and strategic investments.
Tirana Times, June 09, 2026 – Albania’s debate over strategic investments along its coastline has entered a new and more sensitive phase. While thousands of citizens have taken to the streets in recent days to protest against a planned tourist resort in the protected Zvërnec–Narta area, another project linked to Jared Kushner and the Trump family has come under renewed public scrutiny: the proposed development of Sazan Island.
According to a draft decision of the Council of Ministers obtained by BIRN, the Albanian government is preparing to transfer the administration of Sazan Island from the Ministry of Defence to the Ministry of Economy and Innovation. The move is presented as part of the procedures for the strategic investment project known as the “Tourist Resort , Sazan Island.”
The draft decision foresees the transfer of more than 5.2 million square meters of land and existing buildings , more than 90 percent of the island’s surface , into the state real estate fund used to support strategic investments. The government has said the decision does not amount to privatization, but is intended to consolidate the territory and prepare the ground for negotiations in which the state would remain a partner.
The project is politically and strategically sensitive. Sazan has long been under military administration and remains one of Albania’s most symbolic coastal assets. It is also part of the Sazan–Karaburun National Park, Albania’s only national park that combines marine and terrestrial protected areas. Environmental concerns are therefore central to the debate, especially because the area is considered an important habitat for species of international significance, including endangered marine fauna.
The controversy is also linked to the way Albania applies its “strategic investor” legislation. At the end of 2024, the government granted strategic investor status to Atlantic Incubation Partners LLC, a company connected to Kushner. The planned investment is estimated at around 1.4 billion euros and foresees the development of a tourist complex on part of the island.
The timing of the draft decision is particularly delicate. Albania is already witnessing daily protests in Tirana and other cities against a separate tourism project in the protected Narta lagoon area, reportedly involving Qatari investors linked to Kushner and the Kastrati group. These protests, now widely referred to as the “Flamingo Revolution,” began as an environmental reaction but have rapidly developed into a broader political challenge to Prime Minister Edi Rama’s government.
For the government, projects such as Sazan and Zvërnec are part of a strategy to attract major international investment and transform Albania’s coastline into a high-end Mediterranean tourism destination. But for critics, civil society groups and protesters, they raise fundamental questions about transparency, public property, environmental protection and the role of state institutions in facilitating private development in protected or strategically sensitive areas.
Prime Minister Rama has remained defiant, insisting that the government will not retreat from the projects. He has also accused foreign forces of encouraging the protests, describing them as part of a “hybrid war.” Yet the publication of the Sazan draft decision is likely to deepen public concern that major decisions over Albania’s most valuable coastal assets are being made with limited transparency and insufficient public consultation.
The political risk for the government is that Sazan may now become more than a tourism development project. Like Zvërnec, it could turn into a symbol of a wider dispute over who controls Albania’s public assets, how strategic investments are approved, and whether economic modernization is being pursued at the expense of environmental safeguards and democratic accountability.
