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Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama listens to a question during an interview with The Associated Press in Tirana, Albania, Tuesday, June 9, 2026.<\/p>\n
Hameraldi Agolli\/AP Photo\/Hameraldi Agolli<\/p>\n
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tirana, Albania, Tuesday, June 9, 2026.<\/p>\n
Hameraldi Agolli\/AP Photo\/Hameraldi Agolli<\/p>\n
Protesters take part in a rally in Tirana, Albania, Tuesday, June 9, 2026, against the construction of a massive coastal development project linked to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at Narta lagoon area, western Albania.<\/p>\n
Hameraldi Agolli\/AP Photo\/Hameraldi Agolli<\/p>\n
Protesters take part in a rally in Tirana, Albania, Tuesday, June 9, 2026, against the construction of a massive coastal development project linked to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at Narta lagoon area, western Albania.<\/p>\n
Hameraldi Agolli\/AP Photo\/Hameraldi Agolli<\/p>\n
Protesters take part in a rally in Tirana, Albania, Tuesday, June 9, 2026, against the construction of a massive coastal development project linked to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at Narta lagoon area, western Albania.<\/p>\n
Hameraldi Agolli\/AP Photo\/Hameraldi Agolli<\/p>\n
TIRANA, Albania (AP) \u2014 Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama is vowing to press ahead with a luxury development linked to U.S. President Donald Trump \u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner, despite a surge in protests against it there.<\/p>\n
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In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Rama dismissed environmental objections as the result of misinformation and said the development was turning Albania from a country once ignored by investors into one \u201cwhere the big capital wants to come and the big investors want to come.”<\/p>\n
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The government says the development would be transformational for the former communist nation as it seeks to enter the high-end tourism market and pushes for European Union membership.<\/p>\n
But thousands of demonstrators have joined daily protests outside Rama’s office in the capital, Tirana \u2014 including on Tuesday \u2014 against the planned project that includes hotels, apartments, villas and a marina for yachts.<\/p>\n
The prime minister said a formal environmental impact assessment has not started, even though work has begun to clear land inside a nature reserve.<\/p>\n
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Asked if he might step back from the project, Rama refused, adding, \u201cStep back from what?\u201d<\/p>\n
Albania\u2019s anti-corruption agency has opened an investigation related to the project. The government says the land is privately owned, but rival claims over its privatization have emerged.<\/p>\n
\u2018Your country\u2019s absolutely stunning\u2019<\/p>\n
Rama said Kushner\u2019s proposal began by chance. He recalled a dinner in southern Albania with Kushner, his wife, Ivanka Trump, and friends who had stopped in the port of Durres to refuel their boat on the way to Montenegro.<\/p>\n
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Months later, Kushner approached him at a gathering of world leaders and business executives in Davos, Switzerland, and expressed interest in investing in Albania, Rama said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour country\u2019s absolutely stunning, and we would like to look for a chance to invest,\u201d Rama recalled Kushner telling him.<\/p>\n
An investment firm linked to Kushner has been granted special investor status by Albanian authorities.<\/p>\n
The luxury project has two components: a coastal development in the Narta Lagoon area, which is a wildlife reserve, and a smaller resort on the nearby uninhabited island of Sazan, a communist-era military base.<\/p>\n
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\u2018This is still a planning process\u2019<\/p>\n
Work has already begun to clear land inside a nature reserve used by migratory birds, prompting environmental groups to warn of the destruction of long-preserved habitats. Albania has 450 kilometers (280 miles) of coast that remained largely underdeveloped during decades of harsh communist rule.<\/p>\n
Rama said a formal environmental impact assessment has not started because the plan for the development has not been finalized. He said international architects and environmental specialists are still shaping the proposal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to the environment, there is no project yet, there is no environmental impact assessment yet, because this is still a planning process,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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He argued that Albania has a strong conservation record, pointing to bans on hunting and logging that he said helped flamingo populations recover.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have fantastic documentation of how the wildlife in Albania came back thanks to the 10 years moratorium of hunting,\u201d Rama said.<\/p>\n
Since late May, excavators and other heavy machinery have entered the planned development area, opening access routes, digging into the sand, clearing land among pine trees and installing fencing.<\/p>\n
Rama says criticism is full of \u2018half-truths\u2019<\/p>\n
The prime minister suggested that some of the backlash to the project was being amplified by outside interference, citing what he described as a long-running Iranian cyber campaign against Albania.<\/p>\n
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Albania has long accused Iran of backing hackers who attack the country\u2019s cyber infrastructure, after Albania sheltered members of an Iranian opposition group. Tehran has denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of manipulation. There is a lot of half-truths that become bigger and bigger lies by the hour,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He emphasized that he was not accusing individual protesters of acting as foreign agents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama listens to a question during an interview with The Associated Press in Tirana,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[118056,118055,145,118058,118057,90304,23681,59373,84874,59371,84875,86159,61262,82,84,83],"class_list":["post-330334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-albania","tag-albania-rama-trump-kushner-development-protests","tag-donald-trump","tag-edi-rama","tag-ivanka-trump","tag-jared-kushner","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-product-30597-ap-business-news-f-wire","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31995-ap-online-general-financial-business-news","tag-product-32502-ap-online-europe-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}