Trump's son-in-law is building billionaire resorts in the Balkans. NZZ: while the EU moralizes, America buys influence with dollars

"Ivanka, go home." For more than two weeks now, this has been the message on banners in Albania's Tirana, where tens of thousands of people are protesting against a luxury resort that a company owned by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner plans to build on the coast. The Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) sees in this a much bigger story than a dispute over a single lagoon — a demonstration of how Trump's America is using dollar deals to cement its influence in the Balkans and trying to push both China and Russia out of the region. And the European Union, which has kept the region waiting in its antechamber for years, is, according to NZZ, being left on the sidelines. NZZ ↗

What NZZ says

NZZ pieces together three seemingly unrelated cases into a single pattern. In Albania, Kushner's firm Affinity Partners plans to build a resort for billionaires on the uninhabited island of Sazan and on the mainland near Zvernec — complete with a marina, infinity pools, and five-star hotels. NZZ calculates the value of the entire project, including the mainland portion, at €4.6 billion; wire service reports tend to cite a more modest figure covering just the island of Sazan alone. Prime Minister Edi Rama declared Kushner a "strategic investor," granting him access to state land without a public tender, even though part of the land lies within a protected wetland near the Narta lagoon. NZZ ↗ Al Jazeera ↗

In Serbia, Kushner was to build a luxury complex worth €470 million on the ruins of the former army general staff building, which NATO bombed in 1999. The project collapsed at the end of 2025, when Serbian prosecutors charged Culture Minister Nikola Selaković and other officials with falsifying documents that had illegally stripped the former general staff site of its heritage protection status, clearing the way for Kushner's project. President Aleksandar Vučić was furious at losing both the investment and the hope of winning favor with the White House: "Now we're left sitting on a ruin." NZZ ↗ AP ↗

In Bosnia, it's not about resorts but infrastructure: according to NZZ, a €1.38 billion pipeline from the Croatian terminal on the island of Krk, plus three gas-fired power plants (RFE/RL cites a more modest estimate of around one billion euros). The contract went to a company that NZZ links to circles close to Trump; the paper notes that considerable evidence suggests the US lifted long-standing sanctions against Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik in exchange for his support of the project. Also tied to the project is the May resignation of the High Representative for Bosnia, Christian Schmidt, who remains in office until a successor is appointed and speaks of intense pressure from the US. According to NZZ, these economic projects serve as leverage: tourism to curb Chinese expansion, the pipeline to break Russian dominance in the energy market, in which Beijing, according to NZZ, has invested more than €32 billion since 2009. NZZ ↗ Balkan Insight ↗

What's new compared to Slovak coverage

Slovak and Czech media have covered the Albanian protests — but mainly as an environmental case surrounding Kushner. NZZ adds a connecting thread: this isn't three separate scandals, but a single model of transactional politics that simultaneously pushes out rivals and bypasses Brussels. According to NZZ, Balkan leaders are turning to Washington out of frustration with the EU, which has kept them waiting for decades and insists on the rule of law; America, by contrast, closes deals without moral lectures.

The tension between Washington and Brussels is sharpest in Bosnia, where the EU has warned that the American gas project could jeopardize roughly one billion euros in EU funds. RFE/RL ↗ This is a different battlefield from the one we wrote about regarding Croatia's conditioning of Serbia's and Montenegro's EU accession on war reparations: there, influence is contested bureaucratically through accession chapters; here, it is bought directly with dollars.

Limits of this perspective

NZZ is a liberal-conservative Swiss daily that views the world through a lens of great-power realism and the market — skeptical of Trump, yet equally critical of Brussels' slowness. This framing may underestimate the fact that the Albanian protests are also purely domestic in nature: directed against corruption and against Edi Rama's government, not just against geopolitics. NPR ↗

The very word "pushing out" also calls for caution. American engagement in the Balkans is sporadic and transactional; NZZ itself notes elsewhere that many in the region are more worried that the US will withdraw entirely. Moreover, one Albanian resort and one Bosnian pipeline do not offset the Chinese investments that NZZ counts in the region at tens of billions of euros — so this looks more like selective American inroads than a demonstrated shift in the balance of power in the Balkans. Atlantic Council ↗

What hotinfo is watching

• Whether Albania's anti-corruption prosecution office (SPAK) will bring charges from its investigation into the project, and whether Rama will halt or modify the construction.
• Bosnia: whether the EU will actually withhold EU funds over the American pipeline — or back down.
• The fate of the Office of the High Representative for Bosnia after Christian Schmidt's departure.
• The trial of Culture Minister Selaković in Serbia and its possible verdict.
• China's and Russia's response to losing ground, particularly in Serbian and Bosnian energy.
• Whether the Albanian protests hold together as a broader anti-government movement.