Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama is scrambling to contain fallout from protests over a luxury resort planned by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner.
On Saturday, Rama took to X to write a long screed addressed to “all the endless media outlets,” claiming that reports about the scale of protests in his country have been blown out of proportion.
“As we speak, today’s protest has drawn roughly 2,000 participants. It is the lowest turnout so far, but even at its peak, participation never exceeded 8,000 people,” Rama claimed, attaching a video of the protests to the post.
Protests have erupted in the Balkan country over plans by President Donald Trump’s daughter and her husband to develop a $1.4 billion resort on the uninhabited island of Sazan. The project also includes wider hotel development along the Zvërnec coastline, a wildlife-rich area home to species such as flamingos and sea turtles.
Protesters have been on the streets across Albania all week, voicing concerns that the development could severely damage the island’s natural landscape and cause major environmental harm.
“How could a tiny country become global news for reasons so disconnected from the reality on the ground? How could a local protest involving a few thousand people be transformed into an international spectacle?” Rama, who considers the project vital to turning Albania into a tourist destination and has rejected claims that it will damage the island’s natural and environmental landscape, asked in his lengthy post.
Meanwhile, conservation groups and opposition leaders have raised concerns about a lack of transparency and alleged political influence surrounding the project, with many calling for permits to be made public and urging lawmakers to step in to protect the wild coastline.
“We have seen no public consultation or public documentation regarding permits,” Aleksandr Trajce, executive director of the country’s leading conservation group, told The Guardian.
Albanian opposition leader Sali Berisha said he supports renovation projects but raised concerns that Rama may have been “seeking to buy political influence” from Trump by greenlighting the president’s son-in-law’s plans.
“The ambition is not merely to build. The ambition is to demonstrate that development and environmental enhancement can go hand in hand,” Rama said in his Saturday post. He said the project had not yet received a building permit and construction had not yet begun.
“The reality is that there is no project yet,” he wrote, saying there is “only a vision and a plan.”
However, BirdLife Europe’s director, Ariel Brunner, told CNN that he and other conservationists visited the site in early May, where they saw excavators digging up the beach and trucks laying gravel. Rajce also told The Guardian that public outrage intensified when workers began erecting a concrete fence topped with barbed wire around the site near Zvërnec.
“People with land there, or who work on land there, suddenly couldn’t get to it,” Rajce told the outlet. “It’s gone beyond being an environmental issue now. It’s a citizen thing. It’s much bigger,” he added.
Ivanka, 44, appeared detached from the turmoil unfolding in Albania since late May, as she featured on David Senra’s podcast on Monday, speaking about the “restraint and care” she and her husband have put into developing the island of Sazan, which they first came across while stopping for a swim “on a friend’s boat.”
Kushner’s investment firm Affinity Partners struck a deal in 2024 to turn the secluded island of Sazan into a luxury resort. In December that year, the Albanian government granted the project “strategic investor status,” enabling it to fast-track approvals for permits and leases.
With The New York Times describing the protests as at times unruly and, in some instances, violent, Rama said on Saturday that opposition to the project is the result of a ”hurricane of digital hysteria, apocalyptic headlines, manufactured outrage and sweeping conclusions presented as established facts," rather than genuine concerns for wildlife and the environment.
The Albanian prime minister has previously claimed that there is “absolutely no chance that the investment will stop as long as I am here.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Affinity Partners for comment.
