Flash News

'Albanian Files' exposes Rama, Berisha: I invite Eurojust and Europol to investigate 523 projects

Marjana Koçeku warns of more departures from the Socialist Party: Parliament seals the party's decisions

NAMES/ They took the customer hostage and raped her, the two owners of a household appliance store in Tirana are arrested

62-year-old prisoner dies after being in the same cell with his son

Lushnja high school graduates in chorus at the graduation party: Rama, resign! (Video)

E-TJERA

The public beach with a fee that raises the question: are these socialists or specialists?!

Politiko 2026-06-28 12:58:59

The public beach with a fee that raises the question: are these socialists or

By Irena Beqiraj 

While walking along the approximately 7 km long coastal promenade in Nice, France, it is easily noticeable that the coastline is filled with very clean, free public beaches, where occasionally a private beach catches your eye.

No charge to set up an umbrella, a chair or towels. This is for the simple and widely accepted reason that beaches are public natural resources and, as such, should remain free of mandatory entrance fees, to preserve the fundamental human right to nature and to guarantee equal social access.

In Albania, the government, through Minister Gonxhe, has introduced an innovation: paid public beaches, managed by municipalities. The fees for these public beaches, which offer umbrellas, beach beds and a stream of water to rinse your feet, will range from 700 to 1,000 lekë.

Well, in the name of a quality tourist boom, my retired mother, whose government, shaken to its core by the protests, did not wait for October like every year, but indexed her pension in July, with an increase of less than 700 lek, cannot go to the beach of the Municipality of Vlora even for a day. Poor pensioners! In the name of development, this summer too they will have to go to the beach next to the sewage canals, because only there will private entrepreneurs and the “entrepreneurial” municipality leave a strip of beach free of charge to the public.

Meanwhile, my brother, who is younger, has another option. Although he has been a Vlora resident for several generations, as befits those who are not "able" to take on strategic investments or rent beaches and who, in socialist jargon, are called "from the mountains", he can pitch his tent in Kanina and run down to the sea just to bathe.

Who does quality tourism serve, when the government has given away 5.8 km² of public land on the coast free of charge to 32 strategic investors to build and sell villas? Who benefits from the tourism boom, when hundreds of thousands of square meters of beach are made available to strategic investors or a handful of patronage players for long-term use, while the public, to access public property, has to pay?

Even more mind-boggling is the government's economic argument, which should have turned even Adam Smith upside down in his grave: "The public beach with a fee will be in direct competition with private beaches."

The market for private beaches is, in essence, a government-created market. They exist only because the government has decided to give private use of the coastline, every inch of which is public property. Instead of restricting the use of public property for private profit purposes because it is a transfer of value without creating anything new for the public, the government imposes fees on the remaining portion for the public to “increase competition.” This is counterintuitive: it limits public access, creates inequality, and favors those who can afford to pay, excluding lower-income families and locals from their natural environment.

Is there any socialist who didn't study economics at the Higher Institute of Arts who can explain to me the economic logic behind why a handful of private individuals can use or appropriate public property for free, while the public itself must access it for a fee? Is there any progressive out there who can explain to me how, in the name of "quality tourism," we have once and for all buried the progressive socialist agenda, which has the well-being and interests of the local resident at its core?

I still have hope that there is an invisible one. Because those who are walking around reciting dreams of integration into the European Union are not socialists; these are specialists.

Latest news