Albania’s strategic investments: New rules, old approach

The bill keeps decisions with the government, retains exceptions to competition and leaves earlier applications under the old law. What changes, and what remains of the problems raised by journalists, civil society and the European Union.

Albania’s new investment bill promises competition but retains exemptions from competitive selection. It replaces the prime minister with the economy minister as committee chair but gives municipalities no vote. And while proposing to repeal the strategic investment law, it keeps even projects that have merely applied before the new law takes effect under the old rules.

This is the central limitation of the reform opened for consultation on 21 October, with a deadline of 18 November 2026: the state is changing how it organises support for investors without giving communities a vote in these decisions or immediately closing the old route. The 61-article draft offers genuine improvements, from public calls for applications to state aid oversight. But these are not enough to make the entire relationship between investors, public property and the budget open to scrutiny.

Citizens’ reporting has taken this problem beyond legal language to its practical consequences: who controls the companies, how much territory a project takes up, which documents are missing and what the state pays. The test for the new law is whether the public will get complete answers, not simply more published decisions.

A new law that leaves the door open to the old one

The reform’s impact depends heavily on Article 59. Under this provision, not only entities that have obtained status but also those that have applied before the new law takes effect remain subject to Law 55/2015. This preserves their treatment under the old rules; it does not automatically approve their applications.

For approved projects, there is an understandable argument: the investor began work relying on the rules and rights recognised by the state. Extending that protection to applications still awaiting a decision is a broader choice: earlier applications retain the route to support under the old law. This does not mean exemption from every provision of the new law.

The list, dates and status of applications covered by this provision must therefore be open to scrutiny.

For Sazan, Zvërnec or any other investment, the application of this provision depends on the applicant, the date and the status of the file. A development permit is not, in itself, evidence of an application for strategic status. Article 61 also still leaves the date when the law takes effect blank.

Here, the reform falls well short of Jorida Tabaku’s call to end the scheme’s effects and introduce competition for public assets, made in the Economy Committee on 7 April 2026.

Moreover, 31 December 2026 in the existing law is the deadline for submitting applications, not a date on which all its effects automatically expire. The bill removes the previous laws but allows certain applications to continue under them. Existing decisions and rules may also remain in use if they do not conflict with the new law.

For a time, two sets of rules will therefore operate side by side.

From publishing documents to public scrutiny

In his 9 October analysis of “Flamingo’s Mirror”, Lorin Kadiu documented for Citizens the gap between published and missing documents: decisions, project and environmental documentation, and negotiation minutes concerning Sazan. Partial publication did not allow the public to reconstruct the full decision-making process and its costs.

Articles 21, 30 and 37 of the draft partly address this problem. State properties included in the investment fund must be published, the Albanian Investment Development Agency (AIDA) must make the map showing the location and boundaries of the properties accessible, and the committee’s decision must specify property registration details, support, infrastructure and deadlines. The decision selecting the winner is also published under Article 41.

These are important obligations, not merely political promises. Yet they do not amount to a clear duty to publish the complete file, from the application and assessment to the contract, amendments and annual results. A citizen may be able to see what was approved without being able to verify everything that was negotiated, paid for or delivered.

A similar gap appears in ownership transparency. Citizens’ investigation published on 8 June into the structures behind Zvërnec and Sazan distinguished company administrators from economic control and identified the limits created by the threshold for declaring the people who ultimately own or benefit from the companies. International corporate structures do not, in themselves, prove illegality; the question is how much of the actual control the public can verify.

Article 26 excludes investors from support if they fail to declare or update information about their ultimate owners under existing legislation. It extends scrutiny to shareholders, ultimate owners and people with the final say in the company, but does not itself require every link in the ownership chain to be published. Making benefits conditional on disclosure is progress; it is not yet full transparency of the chain.

Another recommendation in the Institute for Democracy and Mediation (IDM) report was to exclude media owners with businesses in other sectors from public benefits. The draft mentions conflicts of interest but contains no such specific ban; checking ownership and restricting the overlap between media ownership and public benefits are not the same measure.

Checks on investors are not starting from scratch: Article 13 of the existing law already requires checks on possible links to unlawful activities. Improvement must be measured by what is checked and how the checks work in practice, rather than presenting each one as new.

The chair changes, but the government keeps control

The government’s strongest argument for reform lies in its own explanatory memorandum. It acknowledges the concentration of investment in tourism, territorial inequality, delays and the fact that strategic status does not guarantee an investment will be delivered. Of 54 projects granted status between 2016 and May 2025, 42 were in tourism: a dated government assessment, not the current project count.

The proposal to shift towards areas and sectors with development potential seeks to give support a broader economic rationale. The criteria in Article 40 include technology, job quality, domestic suppliers, the environment and reducing regional inequalities. This is a better-grounded alternative to measuring success solely by the size of an investment.

But who determines that rationale? The new committee is chaired by the minister responsible for the economy, replacing the prime minister, who chairs the Strategic Investment Committee. Voting members remain ministers; mayors may be invited but have no vote.

Municipalities have the right to propose areas and projects. But proposing is not the same as sharing decisions: area classifications, support schemes, private projects and the state becoming a partner in a project are approved by the government’s committee. The draft creates neither a right for the municipality to block a decision nor a vote for the municipality affected.

The change takes place within the government; the power to decide does not pass to municipalities. Involving more institutions may improve coordination, but does not by itself give more power to the communities affected by development on their land and coastline.

A permanent commission of senior officials, rather than a group assembled for each project, could retain experience and assess applications more professionally. The document explaining the bill also presents this as a way to address past delays. But the commission remains made up of ministry representatives, while the government will determine appointments and how much each assessment criterion counts.

Competition becomes the principle but the exceptions matter

Article 23 establishes competitive, public and transparent selection as the general rule. Calls must specify the properties, support, criteria and application procedure; the application period cannot be shorter than 20 days. The commission ranks applicants and selects the winner.

These provisions create a clearer basis for comparing projects. Genuine competition, however, also depends on how areas, project scale and criteria are defined before a call opens. If these are designed around a predetermined proposal, publishing an invitation is not enough to ensure real competition.

IDM and Transparency International have recommended ending non-competitive contracting and extensions of the strategic investment law. The new competition principle moves in that direction, but formal repeal must be read alongside the exemptions and the continued treatment of old applications.

The draft leaves three clear routes outside ordinary competition. Investments on private property are exempt from competitive selection; a special non-competitive route exists for adjoining state property; and in areas with medium and low development potential, following a call that attracts no applications, subsequent proposals are considered in the order submitted.

The exemption for private property has an understandable rationale: the state is not selecting who will use someone else’s land. But if a project receives public support, the question of equal treatment does not disappear. It must be possible to scrutinise why this investment receives an advantage and what the public gets in return.

Articles 15 and 43 allow state property bordering private property to be made available without competition when the requested area does not exceed 20 per cent of the private property’s area and its use is indispensable for access, infrastructure connections or the functioning of the investment. Article 15 requires verification of the property’s legal status and full payment of the value established under the rules used to calculate the value: this is not a free gift.

Yet payment at an assessed value and the price competition might produce are not necessarily the same. The 20 per cent ceiling measures the ratio to private property, not the public importance of the state asset. The test should be whether its use is necessary, what alternatives exist and why an exemption is justified, not simply its surface area.

For the competitive procedure, Article 39 requires proof of financial capacity amounting to 20 per cent of the investment’s value, compared with the evidence of the ability to meet financial guarantees of at least 10 per cent required by Article 8(4) of the existing law. This is evidence of capacity, not a deposit or guarantee automatically locked in for the state. Raising the threshold may filter out weak applications, but it does not replace checks on the source of funds and project financing.

Public property, the environment and the price of support

Citizens’ investigation into Sazan in March distinguished the proposed building footprint from the wider territory envisaged as an integrated complex. That distinction remains important: a building coverage percentage alone does not reveal how much territory remains genuinely available for public use. This was the map of a proposal, not the instrument of a final transfer of the island.

Article 20 requires coastal use to be defined by area, coordinates, conditions and duration, in accordance with sector-specific laws. For beach facilities, the right takes effect only once the tourism establishment has been completed and is operating. These are concrete restrictions, but they do not replace the need to show access routes, public access and how they will be protected, both on maps and in contracts.

Support is also linked to an area’s classification. Under Article 16, state property may be made available against payment of 100 per cent of its assessed value in high-potential areas, 50 per cent in medium-potential areas and a reduced fee in low-potential areas. A government decision will set out how the property can be used and how the payment is calculated.

This scheme could direct investment towards less attractive areas. But classification simultaneously becomes a decision about the scale of the economic advantage an investor receives. It is therefore necessary to publish not just an area’s label, but the data, comparisons and reasoning behind it.

On the environment, Article 34 requires identification of whether a property falls within the protected-area network. Identification is neither an investment ban nor a restoration of an earlier level of protection. Kadiu’s reporting on legal changes and zoning makes precisely this crucial distinction: the label “protected area” must be read alongside what the law permits within it.

EcoAlbania and the Albanian Ornithological Society (AOS) have opposed the 2024 changes affecting protected areas and called for ecological protection to be restored and meaningful public participation. The draft does not repeal Law 21/2024 or impose a categorical exclusion of investments in protected areas. Including the environment in assessment criteria therefore does not meet that broader demand.

This does not mean that general consultation and environmental laws cease to apply. It means this text does not itself create a dedicated mechanism for communities to share in decision-making. The information and consultation guarantees in Article 7 are directed at investors, under the legislation in force.

European safeguards and the question of cost

The EU’s common position of 9 October 2026 calls for the strategic investment scheme to end within the year and for a unified law consistent with European law. It also calls for transparency in business support, environmental protection and benefits for communities. The document reserves a final assessment of compliance: it is not advance approval of this draft.

The European Commission’s 2025 report had identified problems of preferential treatment and a lack of competition, while calling for effective oversight of state support and independence for the bodies carrying it out. These are tests of the reform’s outcome, not requirements met simply by changing the law’s title.

In this respect, Article 24 provides an important safeguard. Support schemes are subject to review for compliance with state aid rules, while individual support is granted only after the relevant procedures have been completed. “State aid” means an economic advantage financed through public resources that may affect competition.

Article 25 requires an assessment of costs and benefits and monitoring, while the risk of running the business must remain with the investor. This is not an entirely new idea: Article 7 of the existing law also prohibits the transfer of the risk of running the business to the state. The innovation must be sought in the link between analysis, aid approval and oversight during implementation.

Here, the explanatory memorandum creates a tension that needs clarification: it concludes that implementation has no additional financial impact on the budget, while the draft allows supporting infrastructure, use of property at reduced rates and the state becoming a partner in a project. This does not automatically prove new spending outside the existing budget. But the document provides no calculation that would allow the cost of these instruments to be scrutinised.

When the state lets property be used at a reduced price, it gives up revenue it might otherwise receive, even if it makes no immediate payment. Likewise, when the state becomes a partner under Article 22, its contribution must be weighed against the revenue or public benefit it receives. Declaring a public interest is not enough without a verifiable accounting for each project.

Article 45 divides monitoring responsibilities between AIDA and the responsible ministry, leaving the details to later decisions on how the law will work. For the public, the article lacks a clear obligation to report periodically on each project: investment actually delivered, actual employment, support used and measures taken for non-compliance. Without this, the economic promise risks remaining more visible than the outcome.

Investment security is no substitute for accountability

The chapter on reviewing foreign investments sets out a detailed process for checking risks to national security and public order. It covers infrastructure and technologies vital to the country, sensitive information and the diversity of voices in the media, and provides for conditional authorisation, refusal and corrective measures. This security check must not be confused with assessing whether a project deserves public land or support.

The mechanism does not emerge from a vacuum: the European Commission had already noted the legal basis added in July 2025. The draft specifies who makes the decision, how the checks work, what follows when rules are broken and how to challenge a decision in court. Article 51’s confidentiality provisions concern this security screening; they cannot serve as a blanket explanation for withholding every investment file.

Protection for investors also has limits. Articles 7 and 8 seek to prevent promises of fair treatment being used to claim extra rights not granted by the law, or to obtain benefits automatically from other agreements. The state nevertheless remains bound by the international agreements that apply to the particular case.

Article 57 allows efforts to reach agreement with an investor before a dispute goes to court or arbitration, a process in which a separate tribunal decides the dispute outside the ordinary courts. It excludes disputes already subject to judicial or arbitration proceedings and is not a general complaints mechanism for residents affected by an investment. Similarly, the 45-day appeal period under Article 55 concerns decisions by the committee checking the security risks of foreign investments, not every decision selecting a winner; this does not remove rights to appeal under other laws.

The ultimate test of the reform, then, is not whether the committee’s name changes. It is whether the public can see the real owner, compare bids, establish the cost of support and scrutinise the result. The draft brings the system closer to some of these demands, but does not yet guarantee all of them: municipalities receive no vote on the committee, competition has exceptions and transparency stops short of the complete file.