Public access to Albania’s coastline: A case study in institutional fragmentation and regulatory volatility

Abstract

This case study examines the governance of public access to Albania’s Adriatic and Ionian coastline as a representative instance of institutional fragmentation and regulatory volatility in Mediterranean coastal-zone management. Albania’s Constitution treats the seashore as subject to a distinct public property regime, and a 2019 regulation guaranteed a minimum free-access share of 20% of every 1,000-m coastal segment. That share was raised to 30% in 2024, and the underlying instrument was itself further amended in January 2026, three iterations within 7 years, none through primary legislation. Drawing on documentary legal analysis and the comparative integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) literature, the case study finds that the practical obstacle to consistent enforcement of this entitlement is not the absence of statutory ambition but the fragmentation of implementing competence among the National Coastal Agency, an advisory coordinating committee, the National Territorial Council and coastal municipalities, none of which holds binding authority to resolve conflicts between them. This article evaluates this arrangement critically against comparative findings on ICZM integration and against the public trust doctrine, and situates it alongside comparable Croatian and Italian experience. It concludes with three field recommendations, each considered alongside its principal implementation hurdle: consolidating the pending coastal-zone framework law into a single instrument with binding conflict-resolution authority; instituting independently verifiable, spatially explicit monitoring of concession boundaries; and embedding prior, rather than retrospective, community consultation consistent with the Aarhus Convention.