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Mass public demonstrations and competing investigations have failed to shift the Albanian government’s commitment to a high-end coastal development project tied to Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former U.S. President Donald Trump, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama confirmed in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press this week.

The controversial multi-component project, which plans to build luxury hotels, private apartments, upscale villas, and a superyacht marina, has drawn thousands of daily protesters to the streets outside the prime minister’s office in central Tirana. Critics have raised urgent red flags over the project’s planned footprint: one section sits on the protected Narta Lagoon, a critical nature reserve for migratory wild birds, while the second smaller resort component is earmarked for Sazan, an uninhabited former Cold War-era communist military base untouched by large-scale development.

Rama has pushed back hard against environmental and public backlash, framing widespread opposition as a product of amplified misinformation and manipulated half-truths. He noted that the project originated from an unexpected chance encounter: Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump stopped to refuel their yacht in the Albanian port of Durres during a trip to Montenegro, where they praised the nation’s natural scenery at a dinner with Rama. Months later, the pair reconnected at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where Kushner formally expressed interest in investing in Albania’s growing tourism sector. An investment firm affiliated with Kushner has since been granted special investor status by Albanian regulators.

Despite heavy machinery already arriving on site to clear vegetation, build access roads, and install fencing in the protected reserve starting in late May, Rama maintains the project remains in the preliminary planning stage. He stressed that no formal environmental impact assessment has been launched because the final blueprints are still being refined by international architects and environmental specialists. The prime minister pushed back on claims the government is disregarding ecological protections, pointing to his administration’s existing conservation wins including a 10-year national hunting moratorium that helped restore flamboyingo populations and other native wildlife across the country.

For the Albanian government, the project represents far more than a private investment: it is framed as a transformative step for the small former communist nation, which has spent decades working to raise its international profile, attract high-value foreign capital, and expand its nascent luxury tourism sector as it pursues official European Union membership. Rama argued the project signals a landmark shift for Albania, moving it from a nation largely overlooked by global investors to a top destination for large-scale international capital.

When asked directly if he would consider stepping back from the controversial plan, Rama rejected the possibility outright, responding simply, “Step back from what?” Critics have raised multiple red flags beyond environmental harm, however: Albania’s national anti-corruption agency has already opened an investigation into the project, amid competing legal claims over the privatization of the project’s land. While the government asserts the acreage is now privately owned, opposing parties have challenged the legitimacy of the original privatization process.

Rama acknowledged that much of the current backlash has been amplified by outside influences, pointing to a long-running pattern of cyber interference from Iran, which Albania has repeatedly accused of orchestrating hacking campaigns against the country’s digital infrastructure in retaliation for Albania hosting a major Iranian opposition group. Tehran has consistently denied these allegations. The prime minister was careful to clarify that he does not accuse individual, grassroots protesters of being foreign agents, but said bad-faith foreign manipulation has inflated public anger and spread distorted claims about the project.

BRUSSELS – In a landmark move targeting Big Tech market power in the fast-expanding artificial intelligence sector, European Union antitrust regulators issued a mandatory interim order on Tuesday requiring Meta Platforms to reinstate full access to the WhatsApp platform for competing AI chatbot developers, a requirement that will stay in effect for the duration of an ongoing antitrust investigation into the tech giant’s restrictive business practices.

The European Commission, the EU’s 27-nation executive body and primary competition enforcement authority, framed the intervention as a proactive step to protect emerging competition in the AI assistant market before irreversible harm to market dynamics can occur. The regulator launched its investigation into Meta’s WhatsApp AI policies last year, after flagging concerns that the company had violated EU competition rules by blocking third-party AI developers from offering their own AI assistant services on the popular messaging platform, effectively locking the market for Meta’s in-house chatbot.

The probe centered on updated terms of service Meta rolled out for business customers that use AI-powered tools to engage with consumers via WhatsApp. After regulators raised objections, Meta attempted to resolve the investigation by offering to grant access to competitors for a fee. But the offer failed to allay regulatory concerns, with the Commission threatening in April to force Meta to allow free access for rival developers. Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President in charge of competition policy, told reporters Tuesday that Meta’s proposed pricing was so prohibitive that it remained “not economically sustainable for competitors” to operate on the platform.

Under the terms of the new order, Meta must open the paid WhatsApp Business platform to competing AI chatbot providers for no charge. The interim measure will remain in force until either the conclusion of the full antitrust investigation or June 2029, whichever comes first – the investigation currently has no set deadline for completion. Non-compliance with the order could expose Meta to heavy penalties, with fines reaching as high as 10% of the company’s global annual revenue.

Meta immediately announced it would challenge the order, calling the Commission’s decision an overreach of regulatory authority. “The European Commission has decided that OpenAI and some of the largest companies in the world can use the paid-for WhatsApp Business product for free,” the company said in an official statement. “This is regulatory overreach subsidized by the many European companies that pay.”

Tuesday’s action marks a notable shift in the Commission’s approach to Big Tech antitrust enforcement. For years, the regulator faced widespread criticism that its multi-year investigations into major tech platforms moved far too slowly to curb abusive market power, allowing anti-competitive practices to become entrenched before regulators could intervene. In response, the Commission has increasingly turned to interim measures in fast-moving markets where consumer and competitive harm can accumulate rapidly. Ribera emphasized that this urgency is particularly warranted in the AI sector, which is evolving at an unprecedented pace.

“AI markets are developing exceptionally fast, and AI assistants are expected to become an important way for consumers all across Europe to access and use AI,” Ribera said. “Therefore, when the damage can happen quickly and there is a risk of companies being forced to leave the market, we need to use our tools.”

Europe’s high-profile ambition to build a homegrown next-generation fighter jet as a cornerstone of independent collective defence has collapsed after Germany formally pulled out of the flagship joint programme with France, throwing into doubt the future of European military cooperation at a moment of heightened geopolitical tension.

Once hailed as a landmark demonstration of Europe’s ability to pursue unified strategic action and reduce dependence on uncertain outside allies, the next-generation fighter component of the wider Future Combat Air System (FCAS) initiative has instead become a stark symbol of intractable Franco-German discord. The termination of the project comes as transatlantic relations remain strained, and Russia continues its full-scale military aggression against Ukraine, creating a geopolitical context that makes the breakdown of the partnership particularly consequential for European security.

First conceived in 2017 during the joint leadership of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron, the FCAS programme was designed from its inception to reset Franco-German relations, pool limited European defence budgets, and advance the goal of a sovereign European defence posture. At the programme’s launch, Macron framed the effort as a peaceful, carefully planned revolution for European security, a vision aligned with his longstanding push for European strategic autonomy to reduce reliance on potentially unreliable international partners.

The broader FCAS initiative includes multiple interconnected components, from advanced jet engines and next-generation sensor systems to a shared digital “combat cloud” intelligence network, but the manned next-generation fighter jet always remained the programme’s centrepiece. Spain joined the partnership after its founding, with Germany’s defence interests represented by aerospace giant Airbus, while France’s defence sector was led by iconic aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation.

According to German officials, core non-fighter elements of the FCAS programme will continue forward, though details of what that ongoing collaboration will look like remain unclear. What is well-documented, however, is the steady escalation of disagreements that ultimately sank the fighter jet project: rifts emerged over leadership of the programme, the distribution of development work, and fundamental differing design requirements between the two nations.

Prominent German defence analyst Nico Lange has pinned the primary responsibility for the collapse on Dassault Aviation, noting that the French firm pushed aggressively for a leading role that German industry was unwilling to cede. “FCAS is not synonymous with European defence… there will be many other good projects,” Lange noted in a post on social media platform X. Dassault Aviation has not yet issued a public comment on the termination.

Beyond industrial disputes, there were deep mismatches in what each country needed from the new jet. Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) air power analyst Christoph Bergs explained that France sought a small, lightweight aircraft capable of operating from the country’s Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier, while Germany prioritized a larger jet built to establish dominant air superiority.

Shifts in Germany’s defence policy also changed the negotiating dynamic significantly. Following Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and years of pressure from former U.S. President Donald Trump for European nations to increase their own defence spending, Germany made a dramatic U-turn from its decades-long posture of relatively restrained defence investment, approving a massive 100 billion euro special defence fund. This increase in domestic resources left German industry far less willing to make concessions that it viewed as misaligned with its national interests, Bergs explained.

By early 2025, the head of Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, had become an open critic of the programme, publicly questioning whether a costly manned fighter jet would even be necessary 20 years from now amid rapid advances in uncrewed aerial technology. A summit meeting between Merz and Macron last week proved to be the final turning point: Merz proposed ending work on the fighter jet component, and the two leaders reached a shared conclusion that the involved industrial partners could not bridge their differences.

Germany publicly announced the decision on Monday, while the Élysée Palace’s subsequent statement conveyed clear disappointment. “The leaders expressed regret that the industries involved hadn’t been able to make it work,” the statement read. The French presidency added that Paris remains committed to Franco-German defence and security cooperation, framing it as essential for both nations and their European partners.

While Bergs described the timing of the collapse as deeply inopportune against the backdrop of ongoing war in Europe and tense transatlantic relations, he also noted that the termination creates an opening for participating nations to reassess their defence priorities in light of rapid technological advances that have reshaped air power since the programme was first launched in 2017.