The Illegal Law: The Fight For Albania’s Natural Heritage
Updated: Jun 16
In a BBC article from years ago, Albania constituted what Europe had irretrievably lost: a last true wilderness. [1] As the journalist observed, Albania reflects a unique case where much of its nature remains pristine despite the external development pressures that open markets impose. Sensational-ist and, to an extent, neo-colonialist headlines like this characterized much of Albania’s transition from communism, with western journals overwhelmingly covering the intersection between the country’s tourism and natural landscape.
This corner of Europe, which was isolated for more than half a century and appeared unwelcoming for a few additional decades, was now facing a resurgence in the eyes of western observers: from the Accursed Mountains in the North to the “untouched” coastline in the South, the continent’s “Last Wild River” to the southeast, and the thousands-year-old castle in the northwest, Albania was being “re-discovered”. And as is the case of the adventurous human mind, discovery soon turned into a desire to invest and redevelop into the country’s growing international appeal.
Internal “audiences,” however, were facing a particularly difficult choice – or more accurately – had to sit back as others were choosing for them. In the face of growing economic potential, Albanians were asked to reconcile with the fact that their country’s “wilderness” would undergo a drastic transformation in an unrecognizable way, ultimately losing a defining part of their identity.
As is the case with most changes in post-communist countries, development was not systematic but deeply chaotic, unorganized, and lacking a coherent pattern. In February of 2024, however, the Albanian Parliament passed Law no. 21/2024, amending the country’s Law on Protected Areas, and providing, for the first time, a succinct framework for future development in the country’s “wilderness.” In an unprecedented way, Albanians were faced with a clear roadmap to how their country’s environmental heritage would be altered.
It was not until the large-scale protests of June 2026, however, that international and domestic ideas converged most visibly, marking a turning point in how the situation was perceived both within and outside the country. International audiences, for their part, shifted their attention away from the excessively romanticized view of Albania and towards its more urgent and complex structural issues, which to the Euro-Atlantic integration’s detriment, carry large “spillover” potential. Frustrated by the perceived arrogance and systemic corruption, on the other hand, protesters are spearheading one of the few instances where issues concerning Albanians are being represented elsewhere as untampered as possible.
To this end, as noted, there is one law that “started it all”: Law no. 21/2024. The following sections will provide a detailed analysis of its significance in the country’s legislative and constitutional framework – or more succinctly – the ways in which it disrupts the framework. We begin by examining the Amendment’s problematic approach to protected areas, before turning to a critical review of the Constitutional Court’s 2025 upholding of the law, a ruling that raises substantial constitutional, environmental, and political concerns.
The Habitats Under Threat
The public protests against Law no. 21/2024 were largely spearheaded by concerns over proposed infrastructure and tourism projects within some of Albania’s ecologically protected areas, particularly the Vjosa-Narta Delta and Sazan Island. These protests raise not only an environmental question, but also a question about who holds claim to it, who benefits from it, and what kind of country future generations will inherit. To understand the significance of the protests and the weight of the legal landscape surrounding it, it is important to understand both what these habitats are and what importance they hold for Albania’s people.
The Vjosa-Narta Delta
The Vjosa-Narta Delta Protected Area covers approximately 19,738 hectares and represents one of the last remaining intact coastal ecosystems in the Mediterranean. [2] It includes the Narta Lagoon as well as the Vjosa River delta, saltpans, sand dunes, and pine forests, and lies along a major migratory corridor. The large habitat diversity makes it home to 1,725 known species to date, including the greater flamingo, European otter, loggerhead sea turtle, bottlenose dolphin, and Albanian water frog. [3] 23% of Albania’s wintering waterbirds reside in the Vjosa-Narta, and the lagoon serves as a major breeding hotspot for dozens of aquatic bird species. Additionally, the area is home to 39 species classified as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 119 species listed on the 2013 Albanian Red List, and 148 species in the Berne Convention. [4]
The Vjosa River itself is 86% comprised of habitats listed in the EU Habitats Directive and has faced several existential threats as developers sought to exploit its hydropower potential. [5] Environmental campaigns as well as international pressure from the EU over the last decade resulted in the declaration of the Vjosa River as Europe’s first wild river national park in 2023, followed by its IUCN Protected Area Management Category II status protecting it by the highest international standards to ensure ecological integrity. [6] IUCN Category II mandates strictly controlled and limited human visitation, use, and impact. However, the Albanian government opted to deliberately exclude the Vjosa-Narta delta and Narta Lagoon from the Vjosa Wild River National Park, instead leaving them under the weaker protection of IUCN Category V. IUCN Category V includes human habitation and use as integral to the landscape, allowing for more traditional economic activity and development. These classification decisions were a precondition for the passing of Law no. 21/2024 only 11 months later.
Sazan Island
Sazan Island and the surrounding Karaburun Peninsula constitute the Karaburun-Sazan National Marine Park, covering 12,437 hectares. [7] The park is home to numerous marine animals such as the vulnerable Mediterranean monk seal and 35 other species of endangered or protected status. [8] The park carries IUCN Category II status, boasting similar protections as the Vjosa Wild River National Park. However, this status applies only to the island’s surrounding waters, and not the terrestrial areas of Sazan Island itself. Despite this, the island’s designation as a military exclusion zone historically protected it from any major development. However, only 10 months after the passing of Law no. 21/2024, the Albanian government declassified the island for civilian use and subsequently granted it “Strategic Investor” status, allowing for expedited permits and incentives.
Human Relevance
The Narta Lagoon and its surrounding regions have been used for fishing, salt production, and agriculture for generations. The Narta salt evaporation ponds, which span 1,472 hectares, produced 140,000 tones of salt/year at their height. [9] Fishing in the lagoon continues today as an organized economic activity, with many local inhabitants centering their livelihoods around the industry, demonstrating the local population’s dependence on the health of the lagoon’s fish stocks, water quality, connection with the Adriatic, and absence of noise, light, or pollution.
However, the importance of the Narta Lagoon to the economic survival of local populations is also responsible for existing environmental pressures on the region. Anthropogenic pressures include the nearby municipal landfill serving Vlora and the surrounding towns, as well as industrial activities such as modern salt production, leather tanning, and illegal fishing practices. Agricultural fertilizer runoff and sewage contribute to eutrophication, where excess nitrogen and phosphorus result in rapid algal blooms that deplete oxygen for aquatic fauna, disrupting the entire ecosystem. [10] The lagoon’s limited connectivity with the Adriatic sea, partially due to the artificial management of its two narrow inlets, impairs its ability to recover from pollution events. These pressures are largely the product of inadequate enforcement of existing laws and the type of development that the original protected areas framework (Law. 81/2017, “On Protected Areas”) was designed to prevent.
The impact of existing environmental pressures also demonstrates the inability of the region to absorb large-scale stresses indefinitely, as well as the heightened sensitivity of the ecosystem to additional stresses. The conservation biology concept of cumulative impacts states that a system under multiple simultaneous pressures is more vulnerable to any given additional pressure than a pristine system. Further development of a region that is already threatened by restricted tidal exchange, agricultural pollution, and harmful fishing practices may bring the Vjosa-Narta delta and the surrounding region past the point at which the damage becomes self-sustaining rather than reversible.
Law No. 21/2024: The Law that “Started” it All
In 2024, despite being cautioned by the European Union and environmental organizations for more meaningful public consultation and ecological assessment, the Albanian Parliament passed Law. 21/2024, amending Law. 81/2017 . The government described the law as a technical clarification aligned with international conservation standards. What the legislative record actually showcases, however, is the Executive’s and Legislative’s utilization of environmental law – its categories, its language, its procedural structure – to systematically dismantle its substance, while ensuring that the authority to decide what happens next sits and stays within these two branches.
Rather than strengthening environmental protections, the amendment deploys the language, classifications, and procedures of environmental law to incrementally demolish an important part of Albania’s identity: its environmental heritage. This, as we argue, does not merely represent a failed attempt to protect, but an intended undertaking from the Albanian government to gradually erode the country’s environmental protections.
I: The Amendment Granted Unprecedented Power to the The National Council of the Territory (KKT)
One of the Amendment’s most consequential changes is the systematic transfer of authority to the National Territory Council (Këshilli Kombëtar i Territorit, or KKT). The KKT is Albania’s highest territorial planning body, chaired by the Prime Minister, and filled with economic and sectoral ministers. It is not, in any sense of the word, an environmental oversight body.
The KKT was established under Law 107/2014 “On Territorial Planning and Development” as Albania’s main body for territorial governance. Its purpose is development coordination: land use, urban planning, infrastructure, and economic investment across Albanian territory. [11] Under the original Law 81/2017 on “the Protected Areas,” KKT played a bounded role within such areas. It approved zone boundaries and internal zoning structures, but it had no prerogative to approve individual development projects within declared zones. That authority belonged to the National Agency for Protected Areas (Agjencia Kombëtare e Zonave të Mbrojtura, or AKZM), and for specific activities, the relevant environmental ministry.
Law 21/2024 inserts an identical new provision into the governance articles of every major protected area category in the law: National Parks (amended Art. 16(7)), Natural Parks (amended Art. 19(6)), Protected Landscapes (amended Art. 20(7)), Marine Protected Areas (amended Art. 22(4)), and Green Crowns (amended Art. 23(4)). In each case, in sum and substance, the new provision reads: the KKT, when reviewing specific development and construction permit applications, shall adopt by special regulation the rules and technical criteria for main and supporting infrastructure of permitted activities.
Article 16 (Amended 36/1) also transforms the legal character of approvals: "the approval of the rules and technical criteria for development by the KKT shall be considered an act of amendment". Meaning, each time the KKT approves technical criteria for a five-star resort project inside a protected area, it is not merely issuing a building permit – it is legally amending the declaration that defines what the protected area is and what activities it permits.
The expansion of KKT authority is matched by corresponding changes to the AKZM, the body priorly constituted to provide expert constitutional environmental oversight. Under the original law, activities within National Parks required a written and reasoned proposal from the park’s own protection administration, followed by AKZM approval. Law 21/2024 does not formally abolish AKZM, but it removes the provisions through which AKZM exercised substantive authority over development decisions, replacing them with KKT regulations.
This is all particularly dangerous because KKT decisions are governed by territorial planning standards, not conservation ones. The KKT adopts rules and technical criteria for infrastructure, an architectural and engineering mandate. There is no provision in Law 21/2024, when handing off power, that requires KKT to apply biodiversity assessment criteria, consult management plans, or demonstrate compatibility with the long-term conservation of the zone.
To add on to it, the Prime Minister of Albania chairs the KKT. This is an executive role in a body that Law 21/2024 has made the primary instrument for authorizing, and legally amending, Albania’s protected area declarations. Decisions on whether to permit construction inside a National Park or a Marine Protected Areas can now be influenced and made by the Prime Minister, who is trusted to prioritize the best interests of Albania’s environment and its citizens. But because legislative and economic priorities change, it would be hard to reconcile the tension between zoning within protected areas and environmental protections, particularly when falling under the discretion of one individual, financial interests, or party doctrine.
The KKT’s expanded role intersects with Albania’s strategic investment regime under Law 55/2015, which grants fast-track approval procedures to projects designated as “strategic” by Council of Ministers decision. [12]
A development project that is simultaneously classified as a "strategic investment" under Law 55/2015 and qualifies as five-star tourism under amended Article 33 of Law 81/2017 benefits from a double layer of deregulation: automatic environmental permission under the protected areas law, removing the need to demonstrate compatibility with zone-specific conservation objectives; and expedited administrative processing under the strategic investment law, compressing timelines and reducing procedural scrutiny. The KKT functions as the territorial approval body in both regimes. The Prime Minister chairs the KKT. The Council of Ministers, which the Prime Minister heads, grants strategic investment status. Under this framework, the protected status of an area is not a barrier to strategic investments. The circularity of this arrangement is not a flaw in the system. It is the system.
II: Compliance with EU Environmental Expectations
The Amendments featured in the 21/2024 law are difficult to reconcile with international and European conservation standards. Chapter 27 of the European accession strategy targets environmental health and climate change. [13] As Albania works to close all 33 active negotiating chapters, the nation is tasked with demonstrating its institutional capability to enforce EU environmental protections, or acquis.
Chapter 27 is integrated into Cluster 4: Green Agenda and Sustainable Connectivity, which, in principle, directs Albania to repeal the 2015 “strategic investments” law and revise the 21/2024 law on protected areas as pathways to upholding EU biodiversity standards. Specifically, Chapter 27 requires candidate countries to transpose and enforce the Habitats and Birds Directives, conduct credible Environmental Impact Assessments for major projects, and maintain existing levels of nature protection throughout the accession process. Failing to meet these standards poses a significant risk of delaying Albania’s path to joining the European Union.
Furthermore, Law No. 21/2024 departs from international standards set by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD sets forth a framework for the conservation of biological diversity and sustainable use of environmental resources, requiring that nations establish a system of protected areas that ensures that these habitats do not undergo degradation. [14] Albania’s decision to reverse environmental safeguards breaches several aspects of CBD – particularly Article 8, Article 14, the Non-Regression Principle (NRP), and the National Biodiversity Strategy (NBSAP).
Article 8, for example, necessitates the establishment and management of protected areas in the name of conservation, biological diversity, and protection of the environment. To the contrary, Law 21/2024 enables the destabilization of Sazan Island and the Vjosa-Narta regions’ natural habitats by prioritizing commercial tourism and construction that upends the landscape, effectively reclassifying an ecologically protected land into a development-oriented zone . This, in turn, directly violates the in-situ mandate of Article 8, which requires that the state protect these areas in their natural surroundings.
Additionally, Law 21/2024 circumvents the process of thorough environmental impact assessment mandated by Article 14 of NBSAP. By enabling fast-track strategic investments, the law transfers authority away from conservation authorities pursuing harm reduction to the KKT, bypassing scientific review and focusing on investment and development over conservation.
The law also conflicts with the NRP, which 1) requires that environmental protection not be rolled back or diminished by future national laws (Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, preamble) and 2) opposes going against the national strategic stipulations to expand and manage ecosystems by redrawing area boundaries in the name of “strategic investments.” Specifically, Law 21/2024 reverses the 2017 land protection law by allowing luxury real estate development unless it is newly forbidden. This indicates a growing misalignment with EU nature directives, particularly the core acquis that environmental law operates preventively and cumulatively, and the CBD's fundamental requirement that states strengthen the protection of biological diversity over time.
An additional inconsistency of the Amendment is its non-alignment with the Ramsar Convention’s principle of wise use of wetlands. The 1971 Ramsar Convention on Wetlands is the foundational environmental treaty dedicated to the preservation of wetlands. The three governing pillars of the Convention are 1) wise use, 2) Ramsar sites, and 3) international cooperation. [15] Wise use necessitates the creation of sound national plans promoting sustainable wetland management; Ramsar sites require assigning wetlands to the List of Wetlands of International importance and guaranteeing their effective use, whereas international cooperation requires shared wetland, transboundary water system, and shared species agreements spanning across borders.
By allowing the construction of high-end or luxury hotels or energy facilities within these protected areas, the amendment contravenes the Convention’s Article 14 wise use provisions, which prohibits constructions that would disrupt the hydrological, sediment, and ecological systems of the wetlands. Essentially, the amendment inhibits protections that would otherwise prevent drain patterns, separated habitat corridors, noise, light, and waste that disrupt breeding and migratory cycles, as cited by Article 3(1) of the Convention.
The Ramsar Convention requires buffer zones to absorb environmental shocks and combat pollution and human encroachment. By empowering the Council of Ministers to redraw protected area boundaries and rezone land by decree under Articles 15 and 16, however, the Amendment makes buffer zone designations negotiable by executive decision rather than scientifically binding, stripping wetlands of their first line of defense against pollution and human encroachment. This in turn, undermines the precautionary function of buffer zones and converts what is intended as an ecologically determined protective mechanism into a discretionary planning tool, increasing risks of degradation and irreversible habitat loss.
Cumulatively, these provisions replace the foundational conservation logic of the Ramsar Convention, in which wetland integrity is the non-negotiable baseline against which all development must justify itself. Law 21/2024 inverts this logic by permitting development within protected areas, weakening buffer-zone protections, and allowing boundary changes to investment priorities. As a result, conservation shifts away from a governing principle into a negotiable consideration, contravening with Albania’s international obligations and its path toward EU membership.
III: The Law Allows for Boundary Changes to Accommodate Specific Development Projects.
A. The Removal of “Protected Landscapes”
The original Article 47 of Law 81/2017 provided that the territory of a protected area can be categorized as: National Parks, Managed Nature Reserves, and Protected Landscapes. Law 21/2024’s amended version of the same article retains National Parks and Managed Nature Reserves but silently removes Protected Landscapes from the list.
Protected Landscapes encompass significant portions of Albania’s coastline, making up around 13% of all protected areas. [16] Removing this category from the mandatory zoning framework does not eliminate the category itself – Protected Landscapes remain a legal designation – but it removes the obligation to structure them internally. They carry the protective label without a framework, no requirement to demarcate a core area, and no requirement to establish transition zones. A development within a Protected Landscape faces no mandatory spatial structure within which it must be located. A developer does not need to demonstrate that a proposed resort sits outside the core zone because there may no longer be a legally defined core zone.
B. The Elimination of Sub-Zone Categories
Law 21/2024 repeals Article 13 of the original Law 81/2017 in its entirety. The original Article 13 established the internal sub-zones applicable to National Parks, Managed Nature Reserves, and Protected Landscapes. It defined five sub-zone categories: (a) the core sub-zone, where first-level protection applied; (b) the traditional and sustainable use sub-zone; (c) the recreation sub-zone; (d) the buffer sub-zone; and (e) the cultural heritage and landscape sub-zone. [17]
The 2024 amendments reduce these to three sub-zones, eliminating the buffer and cultural heritage categories entirely. However, the buffer sub-zones are spatial mechanisms through which protected areas are shielded from pressures generated by activities at the perimeter, such as noise, light, water pollution, and land conversion. Conservation science identifies buffer zones as critical to the long-term viability of core habitat areas. [18] Additionally, the Ramsar Convention, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Bern Convention have all recognized buffer zones as integral to the conservation objectives. Edge effects can penetrate several hundred meters into a protected area, and their severity is directly correlated with the absence of a vegetated or otherwise managed buffer.
The erasure of the cultural heritage and landscape sub-zone is equally significant. This subzone provided a dedicated spatial protection category for the archaeological, architectural, ethnographic, and landscape heritage that often coexists with the natural area of Albanian protected land. [19] The Zvernec Monastery, situated on an island within the Vjosa-Narta Landscape, is one of the most prominent examples. This elimination removes cultural heritage as a structuring principle within the protected areas framework itself, severing the connection between natural and cultural conservation that the original law explicitly maintained. A monastery surrounded by an ecologically vital coastal forest is not adequately protected by heritage law alone if the spatial planning framework governing the surrounding landscape no longer recognises the integrated value of the site.
Article 13(6) of the original law also contained a sequential procedural safeguard: internal zoning had to be approved by the KKT before the Council of Ministers could formally declare the protected area. Law 21/2024 removes this requirement, concentrating both zoning and declaration powers in the Council of Ministers. The elimination in its entirety of this Article in the original law creates the risk of limiting checks and balances and institutional oversight, particularly in decisions affecting the scope of protected areas. As a result, such decisions become subject to fewer procedural constraints and external scrutiny, risking the creation of prevailing economic and political considerations over environmental and conservation ones.
C. The Core Zone Dismantled
The original Article 48 structured the core sub-zone into two tiers: Level A and B.
Level A was the strictest tier established, imposing unconditional prohibitions on tree and shrub cutting; use of chemicals and fertilisers; any construction of any kind, mineral and peat extraction without exception; fires; grazing, livestock passage, and livestock structures; recreational, entertainment and sports structures; passage through trails except by the landowner; motorised vehicles of any kind except park administration and firefighters; boating of any kind; intensive reproduction of wild game species.
Level B, on the other hand, applied to the broader core zone and prohibited intensive-technology land use; waste neutralisation from outside the park; non-native species distribution; intensive reproduction; road, motorway, railway, urban area, hydrocentral, and oil/gas construction; road chemical treatment; monoculture planting; fire outside designated points; vehicle movement outside designated roads; mineral, stone, and peat extraction (with limited exceptions); mass sports and tourist activities outside designated points; and vehicle racing.
Law 21/2024 replaced this two-tier structure with a single, abbreviated list (Article 20). The new core zone prohibition list omitted any kind of construction ban (still bans construction of urban areas), the trail passage restriction, the boating prohibition, the ban on recreational and sports structures, and the tree-cutting prohibition. These are specific protections that prevent the core zone from becoming a construction site, and they were gutted to make room for a non-urban, luxury resort.
Additionally, in the same Article, they added a new sub-clause stating that permitted activities in the core zone include, in addition to those specific in the zone’s declaration, “those determined in Article 33 of this law.” Article 33’s five-star tourism override, therefore, applies directly in the core zone. In essence, a five star hotel can now be constructed in what the law calls protected territory, because the protections of Level A and B are simply nonexistent.
III: The Weakened Protective Language
The words a legislature chooses to describe what is permitted, prohibited, or required carry the weight of the law in practice. Law 21/2024 specifically deploys vagueness as a deliberate legislative strategy, systematically replacing precise protective language with open-ended concepts that transfer interpretive authority from environmental scientists and oversight bodies to political administrators, developers, and investors.
The most legally significant substitution is the replacement of “prohibition” (ALB: moslejimi) to “limitation” (ALB: kufizimi). These terms are used to describe activities that can happen in protected areas. However, they are not interchangeable, prohibition means no amount of justification, negotiation, or administrative discretion can change its status. Limitation, on the other hand, is scalar, it has a degree that can be applied loosely. For a protected area, this shift erodes the foundational logic of protection itself. This is a regulatory rollback, one that the legislative body can claim as “too small to pay attention to”, but which can substantially transform protected areas by creating a continuous permitting system subject to negotiation and corruption.
Another term which is loosely used is “sustainable development.” The term is one of the foundational concepts of international environmental law, holding that development must be compatible with the long-term health of ecosystems and the needs of future generations. [20] Law 21/2024, however, performs a rhetorical inversion of this concept, deploying it not as a constraint on development but as a justification for it.
The clearest instance appears in the amendments to Article 20 governing Protected Landscapes, which adds: "The category of protected landscape creates opportunities for contemporary developments (ALB: zhvillime bashkëkohore) such as tourist/agritourist activities or other sustainable economic activities, friendly to biodiversity (ALB: miqësore me biodiversitetin)”. The phrase “friendly to biodiversity” attaches a standard with no ecological criterion. The law provides no mechanism to determine what activity would then be allowed on protected lands, as “friendly” is a subjective term.
The problem with deploying “sustainable development” as a permission-granting concept rather than a constraining one, then, is that it severs the term from its operative meaning. In international environmental law, it is given content by reference to concrete ecological criteria. It is those criteria that determine whether a particular project is, in fact, sustainable. A law like 21/2024 that uses “sustainable development” in the context the Albanian legislature has is using its vocabulary to disable the protection it normally provides.
A similar decision was made in Article 3 with the introduction of “harmony with nature” (ALB: harmoni me elementet e natyrës) as the standard for new sub-zone definitions. The definition of "undisturbed natural zone" (ALB: zonë natyrore e pashqetësuar) is a zone in which "human activity is in harmony with the elements of nature." The definition of "lightly disturbed natural zone" (ALB: zonë natyrore pak e shqetësuar, definition 39) is a zone in which "human activity is designed and carried out with elements and/or structures that create harmony with the elements of nature”. The original definitions for the first and second protection levels are: the first level protects "total biodiversity conservation and ensures an undisturbed natural zone"; the second ensures primary biodiversity conservation in a zone "minimally disturbed by traditional and ecotourist activities”. These definitions are tangible and calibrated to ecological outcomes. The amended definitions, on the other hand, are calibrated to an aesthetic relationship, harmony has no scientific content, and it is not a standard that ecologists, environmental agencies, or courts can apply. A five-star resort surrounded by landscaped grounds can be said to be “in harmony with nature”, while destroying a coastal wetland, with the standard excluding nothing.
Ultimately, Law no. 21/2024 stretches the framework of protection to grant greater executive power, legally clearing the path for whatever investment the KKT and Prime Minister deem harmonious and sustainable.
The Constitutional Court’s (Un)holding of the Constitution
In 2025 the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Albania ruled that Law no. 21/2024 is in line with the Constitution. Responding to an application by 37 members of the Parliament’s Opposition and a number of observing environmental organizations, the Court agreed with the Legislative Majority and the Council of Ministers' argument that it does not have jurisdiction over the law as long as it is a parliamentary regulation that does not violate constitutional provisions.
At face value, this principle might showcase an exercise of institutional restraint. Yet, as examined in the following sections, it reveals a number of doctrinal, methodological, and constitutional shortcomings that put the Court’s reasoning seriously in doubt. In particular, the court misrepresents both the Amendments to the Law on Protected Areas, the Constitution, and Albania’s international obligations. As described below, the Court’s determinism on seeing the law through the very narrow lens of ex-post facto acts is inadequate and dangerous for the future of Albania’s natural heritage.
I: The Court Treated Law 21/2024 as Mere Framework Law.
The Constitutional Court’s decision rests on a single premise that reflects almost the entirety of its reasoning: because Law no. 21/2024 is merely a framework law; it cannot, by itself, lead to direct constitutional implications. The Court concluded that since the amendment’s implementation is contingent upon future decisions by the Council of Ministers (Vendim i Këshillit të Ministrave, or VKMs), consequences may or may not materialize, hence deferring any meaningful constitutional review. [21] On such grounds, the Court rejected the applicant’s concerns regarding environmental degradation, natural heritage, and the rights of future generations as insufficient and without constitutional basis.
This reasoning is deeply problematic because it fundamentally misunderstands the object and scope of constitutional review. The court treats the absence of immediate and tangible environmental harm as evidence that an infringement of the Constitution does not exist. Yet Constitutions do not merely shield against completed harm – they also protect against acts that alter legal frameworks in ways that create conditions for future damage to occur. [22] The fundamental question before the court, thus, was not whether a protected area was facing degradation. Instead, the applicants pressed on whether the Parliament had weakened the legal framework protecting a constitutionally and culturally significant environmental resource.
In return, the judgment strikingly emphasizes a very formalistic notion of constitutional adjudication: the Court at present is unable to determine whether the Constitution has been breached, since the projects feared by the applicants may never occur. This principle is unpersuasive because if accepted prima facie, it would seriously undermine the preventive function that constitutional review enjoys. [23] As noted, the function of Constitutional courts is not limited to ex-post facto damage, but whether the legislation itself conforms to constitutional limitations. Take a law that weakens the independence of the judiciary, for example. Ideally, and if clearly noticeable, it would be reviewable before any judge has been removed, the jurisdiction of a court is threatened, or the enforcement of an order is denied.
Indeed, one of the most problematic aspects of the judgment is the tendency to portray future decisions (VKMs) by the Council of Ministers as the true, and in this case, the only source of constitutional consequences. The Court treats the relationship between Law no. 21/2024 and its future implementation as one where statutory authority exists separately from underlying administrative acts (VKMs). This logic reverses a foundational principle of public law’s hierarchy: subordinate acts cannot be detached from the legal framework that empowers them.
This was correctly observed by the dissenting opinion of the Court, which identified that concerns arise primarily from the replacement of prohibitions with limitations and the expansion of permissible activities under Article 33 of the amended law. The article explicitly authorizes certain activities that would otherwise not be allowed in a protected area, and that are permissible irrespective of whether they are included in a future VKM. The legal source of the alleged constitutional harm, then, is not the underlying administrative act by the Council of Ministers, but the statute’s normative alteration itself.
II: The Court Failed to Apply the "Precautionary Principle.”
One of the most serious deficiencies of the judgment is the inability to properly apply the “Precautionary Principle,” despite its centrality in contemporary constitutional and environmental law. [24] The subject of the case constituted precisely what triggers precaution: a) a legislative amendment that drastically alters existing protections is passed, b) and it involves a highly sensitive area of a country’s capital: the modification of environmental heritage. The amendment authorized high-impact development, including large-scale tourism infrastructure, and rather than evaluating whether such change creates serious risk for the country’s environmental resources, the Court continuously reframed the issue as speculative, deferring constitutional review on grounds that damage would only occur at a stage of underlying administrative acts from the Council of Ministers.
The reframing is particularly evident in the court’s opinion regarding the removal of strict protection mechanisms, notably of buffer zones around “monuments of culture” and “strict nature reserves.” Responding to the applicant’s concerns that eliminating buffer zones enables construction and high-level human activity inside and in the vicinity of sensitive areas, the Court diverted ecological consequences into the realm of hypothetical future acts. Ecological science, however, is explicit in that the removal of protective buffers constitutes a material environmental intervention by spatially altering the conditions under which ecosystems function.[25] In that sense, buffer zones cannot merely be considered administrative formalities, but structural parts of reducing the pressure and degradation of an ecosystem.
This is where concepts like “ecological fragmentation” become central to an argument that the Court failed to undertake. Wildlife habitat fragmentation occurs when viable genetic diversity cannot flow from one land patch to another, or is hindered so by obstacles. In the case of the Narta landscape, estuaries and aquatic animals are impacted by roads and construction at any scale of development. [26] When disturbances arise, wildlife populations face population bottlenecks, disrupting migration and altering behavior, and in the case of coastal waters, degraded water quality levels from human derived waste. [27] Conservation biologists widely recognize these as the main pressures to decreasing wildlife population numbers, and in the most extreme circumstances, a drastic decline in biodiversity.
Additionally, one of the most drastic consequences of fragmentation as recognized in the field of biology is the edge effect – the changes in population size and biodiversity at the boundary in which two ecosystems meet . Increased habitat fragmentation increases the edge effect by introducing human derived pressures, such as toxic waste, deforestation, fires, and so on. [28] This in turn, puts extreme pressure on wildlife that is trying to establish itself on a given plot of land.
In protected areas, tourism and economic development are particularly predisposed to creating such fragmentation. This is because development is rarely limited to a single structure, but as noted, requires a network of supporting systems, including roads, water and waste management systems, and energy supply. This, in turn, cumulatively contributes to habitat fragmentation, which over time turns from small-scale into large-scale ecological discontinuities. [29] And because of such risks, governments across the world are explicitly treating environmental degradation as cumulative rather than project-specific.
The Court, however, refused to treat consequences such as fragmentation as part of the constitutional realm. Its judgment endorsed the Executive’s and Legislature’s narrow notion that future prospects for development do not in themselves threaten the constitutional order, implicitly validating their view that constructing five-star resorts within protected areas supports rather than damages ecosystems. Environmental fragmentation, however, is generated at the level of legal authorization, and once the law permits certain categories of development within protected areas, benchmark conditions of ecological protection are permanently altered. This is precisely where the Constitutional Court should have intervened by utilizing the principle of precaution: the moment when the legal system expanded exposure to irreversible ecological risk.
Additionally, the applicants correctly observed that the Amendment to Law No. 21/2024 shifts the legal regime from one of prohibition to one based on conditional permissibility. While the government responded by noting that the law introduces clearer and more explicit rules for environmental protection, the Amendment’s notable use of vague words, such as “sustainable development,” risks creating conditions for abuse through discretionary powers of the government. This in turn, inhibits attempts at preventing fragmentation, violating the principle of precaution in environmental law.
In general, the Court’s opinion reflects a broader structural problem where environmental harm is considered an event rather than a process. As noted, however, environmental degradation does not occur only when a resort is built, but when frameworks lift restrictions and allow gradual erosion of spatial continuity. Ultimately, the Court missed the central environmental question raised in the case: whether the state may restructure and reshape rules so that risk is increased even if it is uncertain.
III: The Court misinterpreted Articles 56 and 59 of the Constitution.
A further weakness of the judgment lies in its treatment of Article 59 of Albania’s Constitution. Article 59(1)(e) commits the State to provide “a healthy and ecologically adequate environment for the present and future generations”, while Article 59(1)(f) requires “rational exploitation of forests, waters, pastures and other natural resources on the basis of the principle of sustainable development.” However, the Court upheld that the applicants’ claims regarding the violation of these provisions fell within the scope of Article 59(2), which notes that the “fulfillment of social objectives may not be claimed directly in court”, and as such treated the environmental and intergenerational arguments as possessing limited constitutional relevance.
The Court's interpretation is deeply problematic because it treats explicit environmental constitutional commitments as little more than non-justiciable political aspirations. The constitutional review sought by the applicants was not to compel the State to fulfill social objectives by providing a healthy environment, but instead to oppose a law that contradicts the Constitution.
While Article 59 undoubtedly contains procedural elements, the judgment disregards the wider framework under which it exists. Albania’s environmental protection is not confined to Article 59 alone. Article 56 stipulates that everyone has a right to be informed about the state of the environment, whereas the Constitution's Preamble, alongside provisions concerning natural resources, establishes environmental stewardship as a value of fundamental importance. [30] Cumulatively, these provisions establish constitutional commitments and legislative guidelines to environmental preservation.
The court’s interpretation, on the other hand, reflects an outdated separation between “real” constitutional rights and aspirational social objectives, as well as mistakenly places the definitions under Article 59(2) in separation from the rest of the Article and relevant provisions in the Constitution. Comparative constitutional practice, however, has long moved away from such rigid categorizations and has recognized that environmental rights and obligations are capable of producing legal consequences through a cumulative process of constitutional review.
In Neubauer, et al. v. Germany, a landmark decision of Germany’s Constitutional Court in 2021, for example, the Court held that Germany's Climate Protection Act (Klimaschutzgesetz or KSG) is partially unconstitutional because it violated the fundamental rights of future generations by pushing emissions reduction burdens too far into the future. [31] The plaintiffs argued that the 2019 Climate Protection Act would allow an extreme usage of greenhouse gases by current generations, pushing the burden of reduced carbon budgets to future generations. Importantly, the Court recognized a groundbreaking right in what it called the “Intertemporal Guarantee of Freedom,” meaning that the state cannot unilaterally offload extreme burdens to future generations as per Article 20a of the German Basic Law. [32]
The Constitutional Court of Albania, however, moved in the opposite direction. Faced with arguments of intergenerational justice and irreversible environmental harm, the Court failed to recognize that such rights were guaranteed by the Constitution’s Preamble, Articles 56, and provisions on the rights of future generations in Article 59. This reduction of constitutional protections to mere legislative policy risks devaluing one of the Constitution's most futuristic provisions, because it transforms commitments to future generations into discretionary political objectives that may be altered by ordinary legislation and with each passing legislative priority.
Intergenerational justice is a growing and widely recognized constitutional guarantee. [33] The concept argues that since future generations cannot participate in contemporary political and legislative processes, their representation is directly enshrined in a country’s Constitution and is done so by the establishment of long-term interest protections. Environmental constitutionalism and law emerged precisely because of this struggle to account for harms that are cumulative, delayed, and borne primarily by future generations.
Ultimately, it is important to recognize that Constitutional Courts do not cease operations once faced with performing a judicial decision that involves social change or politically-charged decisions, as Albania’s Court tried to imply. Constitutional review instead exists precisely because certain values cannot be left to the legislature and the executive branches alone, including an essential part of Albania’s national heritage: its protected ecosystems.
IV: The Court Overlooked that the new amendment violated international legislation and frameworks, hence the Constitution.
A central flaw in the judgment is the reluctance to apply the supremacy of Albania’s international environmental obligations, as per Articles 5, 116, and 112 of the Constitution. While the Court acknowledged that ratified international agreements are part of the domestic legal framework and in cases of conflict supersede domestic legislation, it simultaneously categorized environmental obligations as either premature or irrelevant to the constitutional review of Law. 21/2024. This created an internal contradiction where the Court recognized hierarchy in abstract terms, but refused to operationalize it in a case where hierarchical conflict is clearly evident.
The applicants argued that Law No. 21/2024 is incompatible with several binding international agreements, including the Bern Convention, the Ramsar Convention, and the EU Environmental Acquis, which was incorporated through the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SSA). These agreements imposed concrete preservation and environmental obligations upon Albania. Article 4 of the Bern Convention, for example, requires that states should avoid environmental deterioration through concrete legislative and administrative measures. [34] The applicants rightfully noted that by allowing high-intensity tourism infrastructure in protected areas, the ecological pressures these conventions are designed to prevent are bound to occur.
The Court, however, declined to engage with this normative framework through the argument that future acts have not yet occurred. Article 122 of the Constitution establishes that ratified international agreements take precedence over conflicting domestic legislation and the question posed by the applicants directly qualifies under such provision. As noted, the main constitutional concern was never whether future VKMs “might” violate international obligations, but rather concentrated on whether the legislature had passed a framework that already permits conduct incompatible with international obligations. In that direction, the Court’s postponement effectively neutralized the supremacy clause of Article 122.
The Court’s reasoning becomes even more questionable when considering the treatment of EU environmental law and the SSA. [35] On the one hand, the court correctly observed that by being a non-member state, Albania is not bound by EU directives. But on the other hand, the court accepted that the MSA creates binding obligations on the alignment and non-regression of EU and Albanian legislation on the environment.
Yet, when considering the applicant’s argument that Law.21/2024 contravenes the Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC), the Birds Directive (2009/147/EC), and Article 108 of the SSA, the Court declined to give a substantive answer over fears of being transformed into a “quasi-legislative” actor. This is implausible, however, as it can never be said too often that assessing the alignment of an already existing process does not constitute the issuance of new legislation, but pure constitutional review. The court itself acknowledged that the Parliament cannot reverse the process of approximation with EU Environmental Law. Thus, refusing to operationalize such judgment in the decision simply shows an internal inconsistency of the Court, rather than institutional caution over checks and balances.
The Court’s disengagement with the IUCN framework is another conceptual weakness of the decision. Applicants noted that IUCN establishes strict preventive rules for development in protected areas, whereas the government notably argued that the construction of five-star resorts is environmentally friendly and compatible with the enhancement of biodiversity. IUCN’s Ia, Ib, and II categories, however, are clear in that except for minimal scientific and recreational activities, intervention is impermissible. [36] The Court’s disengagement with this as mere technical disagreement within a legislative dominion is unfortunate because it dilutes the Court’s evidentiary and normative function.
In sum, the court had in front of itself the necessary requisite foundations by both the applicants and the existing legislation, establishing that Law. 21/2024 was not compliant with the Constitution. Its rigid, absolutist and evading approach to the existing law missed an important opportunity for establishing an innovative approach within a pre-existing set of environmental and constitutional frameworks. Ultimately, the court not only failed to establish environmental constitutionalism in line with an evolving international and comparative legislation, but also failed to uphold its promise to protect Albania’s heritage for present and future generations.
Concluding Observations
Ultimately, the story of the Vjosa-Narta delta and Sazan Island represent a coordinated failure across executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Law no.21/2024 effectively retains the names and categories of the country’s protected areas while neutralizing the substantive prohibitions, safeguards, and oversight that gave those categories any operative meaning. Authority to approve development was transferred from a body constituted to exercise conservation principles (the AKZM) to a body chaired by the prime minister with no obligation to apply environmental protection criteria (the KKT). Furthermore, it establishes KKT issuance of a building permit as a revision of the declaration defining the protected area itself. The consolidation of authoritative power, the softening of language from prohibition to negotiable limitation, and the dismantling of buffer zones and core-zone restrictions ultimately serve the five-star tourism that the original protected area framework sought to prevent. When challenged, the Constitutional Court held that a framework law is independent of its implementation and thus produces no constitutional consequence on its own. The Court effectively ignored the preventative function that constitutional review serves.
The consequences of this design extend beyond the Vjosa-Narta delta and Sazan Island. Environmental degradation is cumulative and frequently irreversible, and for an ecosystem that is already burdened with anthropogenic stress, the damage may become self-sustaining. In its refusal to apply the precautionary principle, the Court offloaded its responsibility to both present and future generations, reducing a constitutional commitment into a discretionary asset that can be modified by whatever government holds power and whichever investments are deemed strategic.
Finally, Law no. 21/2024 also carries geopolitical implications. The erosion of environmental protections by a candidate country in the EU accession process indicates that Albania’s rule of law is negotiable where powerful financial interests are concerned, and it does so in direct tension with Chapter 27, which obligates candidates to maintain existing levels of environmental protection. As a result, international attention has been drawn away from the romanticized image of Albania as Europe’s last wilderness and toward the structural weaknesses that it must address before it can integrate. Even more concerning is the demonstration that the Albanian government’s commitments are contingent instead of binding, calling into question Albania’s durability of law and the integrity of Albania’s commitment to the other 32 chapters. The June 2026 protests are a direct response to these failures. Where the Parliament deferred to the government and the Constitutional Court deferred to the Parliament, the protests have supplied the scrutiny that the institutions did not. They are, for now, the only check on Law no. 21/2024 that has functioned as one. The fight over the Vjosa-Narta and Sazan Island serves as a test of whether Albania’s legal order deserves the membership it claims to seek.
Authors:
Erta Hoxha
Ujana Zajmi
Eva Merkoziaj
Bekim Bruka
Ariela Ziu
Bibliography
[1] Elia, Peter. “The Peak of the Balkans Trail: Europe’s Last True Wilderness.” BBC, January 4, 2023. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230103-the-peak-of-the-balkans-trail-europes-last-true-wilderness.
[2] Ministria e Infrastruktures dhe Energjise. Protected Landscape “VJOSA- Narta”, www.infrastruktura.gov.al/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/EN-VJOSE-NARTE-PROTECTED-PANORAMA.pdf.
[3] Schiemer, Fritz. Sajmir Beqiraj, Anton Drescher, Wolfram Graf, Gregory Egger, Franz Essl, Thomas Frank, Christoph Hauer, Severin Hohensinner, Aleko Miho, Paul Meulenbroek, Wolfgang Paill, Ulrich Schwarz and Simon Vitecek. “The Vjosa River Corridor: A Model of Natural Hydro-Morphodynamics and a Hotspot of Highly Threatened Ecosystems of European Significance - Landscape Ecology.” SpringerLink, March 20, 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10980-020-00993-y.
[4] Miho, Aleko, Ferdinand Bego and Sajmir Beqiraj. “Overview of the Vjosa Delta (Pishe Poro -Narta Landscape Protected Area) -Natural Values and Threats.” Research Gate, July 2024.
[5] European Commission. Habitats Directive. May 1992. https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/nature-and-biodiversity/habitats-directive_en
[6] International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). “Vjosa, a National Park in the making,” June 29, 2023. https://iucn.org/story/202306/vjosa-national-park-making),
[7] Karaburun-Sazan National MarinePark “Karaburun-Sazan National Marine Park.” https://karaburun-sazan.net/.
[8] Shkurti, Fatlinda. National Marine Park Karaburun - Sazan and today's trends for tourism development.” International Journal of Geoheritage and Parks, 2019. https://www.academia.edu/102336853/National_Marine_Park_Karaburun_Sazan_and_todays_trends_for_tourism_development]
[9] [3]
[10] Scovenna, Mattia, Francesco De Leo, Luigi Mucerino, Marta Crivellaro, and Giovanni Besio. “Hydrodynamics and water exchange in the Narta Lagoon, Albania.” DICCA, Department of Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of Genoa; Geoscape Cooperative Company; & DICAM, Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, May 22, 2025. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2025.1593167/full)
[11] The Parliament of the Republic of Albania. Law No. 107/2024 - On Territorial Planning and Development. July 31, 2014. https://planifikimi.gov.al/index.php?eID=dumpFile&t=f&f=5636&token=984b991a0c725de5fa11e124cfbb746d25e5d054)
[12] The Parliament of the Republic of Albania. Law on Strategic Investments in the Republic of Albania. UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), January 1, 2016.
[13] European Commission. ANNEX II to the Commission Implementing Decision on the financing of the annual action plan in favour of Montenegro for 2021 https://enlargement.ec.europa.eu/document/download/5761bcd6-8801-4e4f-8aec-1347bdb30ccf_en
[14] UN Environment Programme “Decision Adopted By the Conference of teh Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity” , December 7-19, 2022. https://www.cbd.int/doc/decisions/cop-15/cop-15-dec-04-en.pdf
[15] United Nations. Convention on wetlands of international importance especially as waterfowl habitat. February 2, 1971.
[16] Institute of Statistics (INSTAT). “Forestry and Biodiversity Statistics: Year 2024.” INSTAT, 2025. https://www.instat.gov.al/media/sqlp5lis/forestry-anglisht-formatuar.pdf
[17] Kuvendi i Republikes se Shqiperise. “Ligji 81/2017 Per Zonat e Mbrojtura.” May 4, 2017. (https://qbz.gov.al/share/r0t5NSLYS_SLFG-7FydjDg).
[18] Sawant, Nupir. “What are Buffer Zones and why are they important?” Think Wildlife Foundation. https://thinkwildlifefoundation.com/what-are-buffer-zones-and-why-are-they-important/.
[19] UNESCO World Heritage Centre. “Cultural landscapes and protected areas: Unfolding the linkages and synergies.” World Heritage Magazine, March 19, 2014.
[20] United Nations. “Fast Facts – What is Sustainable Development?”
[21] Gjykata Kushtetuese e Republikës së Shqipërisë. “Vendim nr. 45 datë 31.07.2025
(V-45/25),” July 31, 2025
[22] Dworkin, Roland. 1977. Taking Rights Seriously. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Repr., Bloomsbury Revelations, 2022),114.
[23] Vermeule, Adrian. “Precautionary Principles in Constitutional Law.” Journal of Legal Analysis, May 22, 2012.
[24] Convention on Biological Diversity. “Precautionary Approach.” https://www.cbd.int/marine/precautionary.shtml
[25] Ebregt, Arthur and Pol De Greve. “Buffer Zones and their Management: Policy and Best Practices for terrestrial ecosystems in developing countries.” International Agricultural Centre, October 2000. https://edepot.wur.nl/118089
[26] Wetlands International. “Wetland at risk: let’s not sacrifice the Vjosa-Narta in Albania for the sake of luxury tourism.” June 8, 2026. https://europe.wetlands.org/wetland-at-risk-lets-not-sacrifice-the-vjosa-narta-in-albania-for-the-sake-of-luxury-tourism/
[27] International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). “How habitat fragmentation affects animals,” September 2, 2025.
[28] Ries, Leslie, Robert J. Fletcher, James Battin and Thomas D Sisk. “Ecological Responses to Habitat Edges: Mechanisms, Models, and Variability Explained.” Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics, December 2004.
[29] Council on Environmental Quality (U.S.). 1997. Considering Cumulative Effects under the National Environmental Policy Act. Washington, DC: Council on Environmental Quality, 7 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Considering_Cumulative_Effects_Under_the/t47RsbEzYm8C?hl=en&gbpv=1]
[30] Albania. Constitution of the Republic of Albania. 1998. https://constitutionnet.org/sites/default/files/Albania%20Constitution.pdf
[31] German Bundesverfassungsgericht (Federal Constitutional Court). Neubauer, et al. v. Germany. Case No. 1 BvR 2656/18. Order of 24 March 2021. English translation provided by the Columbia Climate School, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. https://www.climatecasechart.com/documents/neubauer-et-al-v-germany-order_7977
[32] Germany. Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz). May 23, 1949. Article 20a. Gesetze im Internet, English Version. https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.html
[33] Neumann, Katharina. “From the Streets to the Courtroom: The Potential of an Intergenerational Justice Doctrine as a Key for Successful Judiciary Climate Activism.” The Oxford University Undergraduate Law Journal, 2022, 1. https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2022-10/1_-_streets_to_courtroom.pdf
[34] Council of Europe, Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats, September 19, 1979, European Treaty Series No. 10 https://www.cbd.int/doc/external/cop-09/bern-02-en.pdf
[35] Beqiraj, Pranvera, and Dorina Gjipali. “Stabilization and Association Agreement in the Jurisprudence of the Albanian Constitutional Court” Juridical Tribune – Review of
Comparative and International Law, August 25, 2024, 458. https://tribunajuridica.eu/arhiva/y14v3/7.pdf
[36] Dudley, Nigel, ed. Guidelines for Applying Protected Area Management Categories. Gland, Switzerland: International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 2008
Comments