Albania's prime minister accused unnamed foreign actors of fuelling four days of violent student-led unrest he says is aimed at derailing the country's EU bid — while presenting no evidence.
Published 16 October 2026 · 21:16 GMT
TIRANA — Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Friday blamed the involvement of “foreign hands” for escalating protests that have torn through the capital for four consecutive days, declaring in a Facebook video that the unrest is aimed at hindering Albania's bid to join the European Union. “These are foreign hands that do not wish for Albania to be at peace,” he said, insisting the violence had “absolutely nothing to do with the hardships, problems or legitimate aspirations of anyone who desires a better life.”
Thousands of demonstrators marched through Tirana on Friday on the fourth day of an increasingly violent student-led campaign to force Rama to resign. Police used tear gas, water cannon and rubber batons while protesters hurled stones and Molotov cocktails, set fire to rubbish bins to block roads, and smashed shopfronts. Fighting continued into the night in several parts of the city, and the unrest has spread beyond the capital to Durres, Shkodër, Korçë and Elbasan.
The week began on Tuesday, when hundreds of students gathered outside the Education Ministry chanting “Rama resign!” The students, joined by high-school pupils boycotting classes, demand Rama's departure, better university conditions, lower tuition, action on corruption, jobs and the cost of living. On Wednesday the Education Ministry caught fire during a second day of clashes; Thursday turned into a riot: protesters smashed windows, broke into government buildings, raided a bank and set the entrance of the finance ministry on fire. An office of the College of Europe on a university campus was burnt out — Rama toured its remains, calling it “the ruin left by hands that are not, and can never be, the hands of students.”
The toll is climbing. Interior Minister Ervin Demo said Friday that 156 people had been injured since Tuesday, including 97 police officers; 79 of the injured were treated at Tirana's Trauma Hospital. Police said 160 people were detained on Thursday night alone for acts of violence. Demo acknowledged that excessive police force had been registered in two instances and that two officers were suspended. The EU delegation in Albania has urged the authorities to respond proportionately after “allegations of excessive violence by the police against protesters and journalists.” This week's street battles are the latest escalation of a movement that began as peaceful summer demonstrations: see our earlier reporting on the protests as they turned violent and the Albania country profile for the political backdrop.
Rama has provided no details and no evidence for his “foreign hands” charge — no names, no countries, no intelligence shown. As France 24's reporting notes, he has “routinely dismissed protesters' concerns, accusing them of being manipulated by foreign interests — without providing details or evidence.” Balkan Insight's Tirana correspondents report the same vacuum: Rama “extended his accusations to include ‘foreign actors’ but did not identify them or present any evidence of their involvement.”
What is equally unresolved is who the masked groups are — the young men smashing shopfronts and looting stores whom an AFP journalist watched at work, and whether they answer to anyone at all. The true scale of detentions of minors remains disputed: opposition MP Erald Kapri claims police are detaining an unknown number of minors and “brutally beating the young students,” a charge the government has not answered with figures. And it remains to be seen whether the street keeps the upper hand through the weekend.
This is the biggest challenge yet to Rama, who has run Albania since 2013 and whose Socialist Party won re-election with a landslide last year. He has staked his legacy on taking the country into the European Union — Albania, alongside Montenegro, currently leads the Balkan accession pack, with Tirana aiming for membership as early as 2028. Street warfare in the capital, torched ministries and a prime minister accusing phantom foreign saboteurs is the worst possible advertisement for that candidacy.
But the stakes are generational as much as geopolitical. The crowds are overwhelmingly young — teenagers throwing paving stones at riot shields, schoolchildren boycotting classes — and their chants target not only Rama but the entire post-communist political class. “We are not criminals. We simply want a better life for our parents and ourselves. We do not want to leave Albania,” 18-year-old Ledia told AFP.
The “foreign hands” line is a familiar Balkan reflex — and Rama deployed it in stages. First he blamed his bitter rival, Democratic Party leader Sali Berisha, for the violence. When that did not stick, he raised the spectre of foreign sabotage. On Friday he went further still: “The evil hand, the old hand, the evil hand that has followed Albania as a curse since 1912 — and that we know very well whose it is for the past 30 years — is today supported by other hands, foreign hands, foreign hands that do not want Albania to be at peace, do not want Albania to be part of the united European family.” The phrasing, with its 1912 independence-era echo, is aimed squarely at Serbia — Tirana's historical antagonist, where his counterpart's political fortunes are themselves under pressure; see our coverage of Serbia's own political crisis.
Strategically, the charge does three things. It reframes a domestic legitimacy crisis as a national-security emergency. It delegitimises the protesters — “All of this is the work of the very same hand, the hand that has gripped the Albanian opposition by the throat,” Rama said — without engaging their demands. And it internationalises the stakes: if Brussels believes the unrest threatens the accession timetable, Rama hopes, the EU will read the chaos as the opposition's doing, not his government's. The risk is the opposite: every European headline about “foreign hands” reads in Brussels as a government losing control of the narrative — and of the street.
The first casualty may be the accession timetable. Every burning ministry and every night of tear gas is ammunition for EU skeptics who argue the Balkans are not ready; the European Commission's progress assessments weigh stability of institutions heavily. The second is investment: the Kushner-linked €1.4bn resort that ignited the summer protests sits in a protected area home to sea turtles and flamingos, and its fate now determines whether Albania's coast is developed by decree or by consent. A third effect is already visible in the region: student activism is sweeping Europe — France's high-school blockades, now Albania's street battles — and governments are discovering that generational anger travels faster than their crisis plans. Finally, the opposition faces its own test: Democratic Party leader Sali Berisha would love to claim the crowd, but the crowd does not want him. If no political force can channel this energy, the street becomes the only parliament young Albanians trust.
The short answer is exhaustion. What began in June as environmental demonstrations against the coastal resort hardened into a demand for Rama's removal after four months of peaceful marches the students say the government ignored. “We've been protesting peacefully for 140 days, and nothing was heard. So this is our only chance to be heard and get our rights that we deserve,” a 19-year-old protester told Reuters. Opposition MP Erald Kapri puts the figure above 130 days and calls this “essentially part of a protest that has been going on” since the summer. When condescension is the only official answer for 140 days, stones stop being a surprise.
Watch three things now. First, whether the weekend brings a fifth and sixth night of clashes — parliament has already cancelled its session, and police lines are stretched. Second, whether the Political Dialogue Forum's proposal gains traction: academics and public figures are demanding a technical government to prepare free elections, continue EU integration and amend the electoral code before pre-term elections this year — the only political, rather than security, answer on the table. Third, Brussels: the EU delegation's proportionality warning is real leverage. If the footage keeps showing “excessive violence against protesters and journalists,” Rama's 2028 dream — the shield he is hiding behind — is the first thing the street will burn.
The Western lens frames this as the education-and-corruption revolt of a would-be EU member. Reuters and the Western press foreground the students' grievances — rising tuition, crumbling universities, corruption — and Rama's refusal to yield on his elected mandate. The EU's leverage is accession conditionality, and Brussels will watch two things: whether Tirana's police keep their response proportionate, and whether the anti-corruption fight Rama touts — “Albania is tackling it as never before,” he said — is real enough to keep the 2028 timetable alive. See how the EU projects institutional power in its neighbourhood.
The Eastern lens reads the episode as another Western-periphery state wobbling between Brussels and its own streets — with Tirana itself pointing east. Rama's deliberate refusal to name the “foreign hands”, while invoking the “evil hand” Albania has known “for the past 30 years,” is a calculated nod toward Serbian intelligence that lets him claim an external enemy without triggering a diplomatic incident. Moscow-aligned media will likely flip the script: a NATO capital in flames, to them, is proof the EU's Balkan enlargement is hollow.
The Global South lens, led by regional reporting from BIRN's Balkan Insight, is the most damning of all — not toward Rama alone, but toward the whole post-communist political class. The striking feature of these rallies, regional analysts note, is their contempt for everyone in power: not “Berisha back in” but a double-barrelled rejection of the entire system. The students were called to the streets by the “Flamingo Revolution” — daily protests since June against the luxury resort in a protected coastal zone linked to Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner — but they stayed because 140 days of peaceful protest got them nothing. From this angle, the story is not geopolitics at all. It is a generation discovering that polite politics is closed to it.
Prime Minister Edi Rama said on Friday that unnamed “foreign hands” are fuelling the unrest to derail Albania's EU accession, declaring they “do not wish for Albania to be at peace.” He has named no countries, shown no evidence and offered no details — and has routinely accused protesters of foreign manipulation without proof, according to France 24's reporting.
Students began marching in June in the “Flamingo Revolution” against a €1.4bn Kushner-linked luxury resort in a protected coastal area. After more than 130 days of peaceful protest that students say the government ignored, the movement escalated: since Tuesday it has centred on demands for Rama's resignation, better universities, lower tuition and action on corruption.
Interior Minister Ervin Demo said on Friday that 156 people have been injured since Tuesday, including 97 police officers, with 79 treated at Tirana's Trauma Hospital. Police detained 160 people on Thursday night alone for acts of violence. Demo also admitted two instances of excessive police force and suspended two officers.
No. Rama told Reuters on Thursday he would not resign, saying “governments are changed through democratic elections” and that stepping down would betray voters after his Socialist Party's landslide re-election last year. Academics instead propose a technical government to prepare early elections, but Rama insists he will not bow to violence.
