BRUSSELS \u2013 The European Commission has urged Albania to act without delay to ensure \u200bit is aligned with EU environmental legislation if it wants \u200cto accede \u200cto the bloc, a Commission spokesperson said on \u200bTuesday, commenting on a planned Kushner-backed luxury resort.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Albania\u2019s Prime Minister Edi Rama said in an interview that his country \u2060will press ahead with a luxury resort planned by U.S. President Donald Trump\u2019s \u2060son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka Trump on a remote stretch of Balkan coast despite protests over its \u200benvironmental impact.<\/p>\n
The protests have \u2060been dubbed the Flamingo Revolution because the stretch of coast is a migratory pitstop for the birds. \u2060They have widened \u200binto broader opposition to aspects of Rama\u2019s 13-year \u200btenure.<\/p>\n
The 27-member EU has said it could admit new \u200bmembers, including \u200cMontenegro, Albania and Ukraine by 2030, but that depends on alignment with EU laws, including on the environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlbania should refrain from action that could undermine the fulfillment of the closing \u200cbenchmark, and we expect the Albanian authorities to act without delay,\u201d spokesman Guillaume Mercier said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are in contact with the Albanian authorities on this issue,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Faced with protests over the last week in Tirana \u200band \u200bon the southern coast, where the resort has been \u200bproposed, Rama played down the environmental concerns and said an environmental \u2060impact assessment would be completed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are very proud of what we have done for the wildlife in Albania. The European Commission has no reason to doubt our firm will to protect whatever \u200bhas to be protected when it comes to wildlife and nature,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kushner\u2019s Affinity Partners\u2019 company, which is set to build the resort, has not responded to\u00a0requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS \u2013 The European Commission has urged Albania to act without delay to ensure \u200bit is aligned with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[104],"tags":[6213,211,210,2072,327,53026,16790],"class_list":["post-104764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brussels","tag-albania","tag-belgium","tag-brussels","tag-environment","tag-eu","tag-ivanka-trump","tag-jared-kushner"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116726743871552082","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}