NATIONAL ASSAULT – ALBANIA AT A CROSSROADS AND THE NEED FOR A NEW STATE By Flamur Buçpapaj

NATIONAL ASSAULT – ALBANIA AT A CROSSROADS AND THE NEED FOR A NEW STATE
By Flamur Buçpapaj
Albania stands at a deep crisis of its development model, and this crisis can no longer be hidden behind tourism figures, construction, imports, or political declarations. After more than three decades of transition, the country continues to have a dependent economy, a weak industrial base, an under-supported agricultural sector, a financial system that does not sufficiently serve production, an administration often trapped in bureaucracy, and a political class that has failed to build a long-term national vision. Albania possesses significant natural resources—oil, chromium, copper and other minerals, water resources, land, forests, coastline, energy potential, ports, a favorable climate, and a strategic position on the Adriatic—but these assets have not been transformed into a strong national productive economy. Instead, the country has increasingly become a consumer of goods produced elsewhere.
Albania extracts oil, yet it does not have a sufficiently strong and modern domestic oil-processing industry. A country that produces oil should seek to develop modern refineries, petrochemical industries, and higher-value products. Albania once possessed capacities connected to the chemical and fertilizer industries, yet today Albanian farmers remain dependent on imported fertilizers and agricultural inputs. Albania possesses substantial mineral resources, including chromium and copper, but the objective must be to move from exporting raw materials toward domestic processing, creating added value, jobs, and exports. It cannot be called national development when a country extracts its own resources and then purchases the processed products from abroad.
The problem is even more serious in agriculture. Albania has failed to build a modern national irrigation system. It lacks sufficient and properly managed reservoirs, many irrigation channels are deteriorated, and farmers remain exposed to drought, water shortages, and uncertainty in the marketplace. A country that claims to be developing its agricultural sector must have a national water strategy: new reservoirs where they are economically and technically justified, rehabilitation of existing reservoirs, modern irrigation channels, drip-irrigation systems, and rational management of water resources. Albania also needs a national program for fruit trees and olive cultivation, including apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches, oranges, mandarins, lemons, and other crops suited to the different microclimates of the country.
Albanian land must not remain unused while our markets are filled with imported products. Collection centers, cold-storage facilities, packaging centers, and agro-processing plants must be established in the regions and major production areas so that farmers do not plant today without knowing where they will sell tomorrow. Within the framework of competition and public-procurement laws, the state can establish mechanisms for purchasing domestic products for schools, hospitals, public institutions, and other state structures, creating a stable market for Albanian producers. The complete chain must be built: land, water, production, collection, processing, packaging, market, and export. This is a real economy.
Albania must also understand that a development model based primarily on construction, real estate, services, and the circulation of capital cannot replace a strong industrial base. The problem is not capitalism itself. The problem is that Albania needs productive, competitive, and fair capitalism. We need a modern mixed economy in which private enterprise remains the principal engine of development, while the state intervenes where the public and national interest requires strategic investment, regulation, financing, infrastructure, and legal guarantees. The state should not control every economic activity, but neither can it behave as a spectator. It must be a developmental and regulatory state and a guarantor of fair competition.
Albania needs a development bank or specialized financial institutions for agriculture, industry, and exports, because a farmer cannot build a modern orchard, greenhouse, processing plant, or irrigation system with short-term and expensive credit. The banking system must finance production and technology, while costs and commissions must be transparent and strongly supervised. Money generated in Albania must have greater opportunities to return as investment in Albania. Albania needs a new industrial policy: oil must be connected to processing; minerals to manufacturing; agriculture to agro-processing; energy to industry; universities to scientific research; ports to trade; and tourism to domestic production.
The country must restore the production of tools, light machinery, agricultural equipment, construction materials, food products, and new technologies. Albania should develop its maritime economy, fishing, ship repair, maritime transport, and port infrastructure. Albania cannot exploit its coastline only for construction and tourism; it must turn its access to the sea into a commercial and strategic advantage. At the same time, the coastline must be protected from wastewater, garbage, and pollution. A national program is needed for wastewater-treatment plants, river cleanup, waste management, and protection of water resources.
National security must also be part of Albania’s revival. Albania is a NATO member and must be a serious ally, but this does not eliminate the need for national capabilities. The country should gradually develop lawful and controlled defense industries, including the production and maintenance of standardized equipment and ammunition, surveillance systems, communications, electronics, and counter-drone technologies, creating a new connection between industry, universities, and scientific research. Albania must strengthen air-defense capabilities, airspace surveillance, critical-infrastructure protection, and military transport in accordance with NATO standards. A state that develops no technological capacity of its own remains permanently dependent on others.
But Albania’s crisis is not only economic; it is also political and institutional. When citizens see no real alternative, when power circulates within the same political structures, and when politics is more concerned with power than production, apathy develops and public trust disappears. Albania needs genuine political rotation, fair competition, and an alternative that is measured not only by the names of candidates, but by its program and the results it promises.
It is precisely in this space that Sulmi Nacional — National Assault seeks to enter, as a political initiative that is collecting the signatures required to pursue the legal procedures for certification. Its objective should be to build a new state in an institutional and democratic sense: a state strong in enforcing the law, uncompromising against corruption, firm against abuse of power, but supportive of citizens, farmers, workers, entrepreneurs, and investors.
A new state does not mean an authoritarian state. It means a functional, transparent, professional, and accountable state. It means that the law must be stronger than political connections; public wealth must not be used for narrow interests; public tenders must be transparent; investors must have legal security; and citizens must not need political connections to receive services to which they are legally entitled.
The model of decentralization must also change. Cities and municipalities need local economies, industrial zones, agricultural markets, collection centers, and concrete employment strategies. Albania cannot develop only through Tirana. The north, south, east, west, mountainous areas, coastal areas, and rural communities must each have their own economic strategies.
Vocational education must also be restored, because a factory is not built with capital alone. It requires technicians, mechanics, electricians, agronomists, programmers, engineers, and skilled workers. Albanian universities must be connected with industry, and scientific research must be funded for projects that solve concrete economic problems. Albania should also create a national innovation and technology fund so that Albanian young people are not merely consumers of foreign technology, but creators of new technologies themselves.
In the end, the question is simple: What kind of Albania do we want?
An Albania that imports most of what it consumes, builds endlessly but produces little, sells raw materials and buys processed products, loses its young people, and waits for foreign capital?
Or an Albania that produces, processes, exports, finances its farmers, protects its national industries, develops technology, preserves its natural resources, cleans its coastline, strengthens its security, and gives its citizens the opportunity to live with dignity in their own country?
Albania is not poor by nature. It is poor in the organization and use of its own potential. Therefore, national revival cannot be merely an electoral slogan. It must be a national project.
It must begin with land, water, industry, energy, knowledge, technology, security, and justice.
Sulmi Nacional — National Assault should place this project before the citizens and measure itself not by promises, but by an implementable program with deadlines, financing, transparency, and accountability.
Albania does not need another administration that merely manages poverty. It needs a state that creates wealth, jobs, and security.
It does not need only money that circulates; it needs capital that produces.
It does not need only construction; it needs factories.
It does not need only imports; it needs exports.
It does not need only consumer credit; it needs development financing.
It does not need only words about patriotism; it needs an economy that makes patriotism tangible in everyday life.
Albania must move from a consumption economy to a production economy, from a passive state to a developmental state, and from politics based on narrow interests to politics based on the national interest.
This is the real challenge.
This is why a new political alternative is necessary.
And this is the battle that Sulmi Nacional — National Assault must open:
for a new state, a productive economy, and an Albania that no longer waits for the future, but builds it itself.