Albania faces another potentially costly international dispute after losing several arbitration cases in recent years that have exposed the state to hundreds of millions of euros in compensation and related liabilities.
Tirana Times, August 10, 2026 – Albania is no stranger to costly international arbitration. Over the past decade, the country has faced a series of disputes with foreign investors that have generated substantial liabilities for the state budget. Government data cited in an analysis of Finance Ministry records showed that by May 2022 Albania had recognized about 175.9 million euros in liabilities arising from 15 arbitration cases it had lost. One of the most prominent was the Hydro and others case involving Italian businessman Francesco Becchetti, in which an ICSID tribunal ordered Albania to pay about 99.5 million euros in damages, in addition to interest and millions more in legal and arbitration costs.
That record gives the Vlora Airport dispute significance beyond the fate of a single infrastructure project. A new claim potentially running into hundreds of millions of euros would revive questions about how the Albanian state manages major concession contracts and why commercial disputes involving public institutions have repeatedly escalated into expensive international proceedings.
Past arbitration cases have also shown that the financial consequences of such disputes can outlive the governments and officials involved in the original decisions. Ultimately, awards, legal costs and related liabilities are borne by the state budget and therefore by taxpayers. That concern is central to Pacolli’s argument that MABCO sought for more than a year to avoid international arbitration before concluding that legal action outside Albania had become unavoidable.
Past experience also makes MABCO’s claimed exposure of around 320 million euros particularly sensitive. The figure does not mean that an arbitration tribunal would necessarily award that amount. Any eventual compensation would depend on jurisdiction, evidence, contractual obligations and the tribunal’s assessment of damages. But even a fraction of such a claim could make the Vlora Airport case one of Albania’s most consequential investor disputes.
Past arbitration records provide an important warning against assuming that such claims are merely negotiating tactics. Albania has previously lost major international cases, and the Hydro case demonstrates that tribunals can impose substantial compensation when they conclude that state conduct violated protections afforded to an investor. The ICSID record confirms that the Hydro proceeding ended with an award against Albania and that the country’s subsequent annulment effort was rejected.
Kjo do ta forconte shumë edhe fundin e analizës. Unë do ta ndryshoja përfundimin në këtë formë:
If MABCO files for arbitration, Albania will therefore enter the dispute carrying not only the arguments surrounding Vlora Airport but also the weight of its previous experience with costly international cases.
The government can argue that the airport was not completed within the contractual deadline. MABCO will argue that state institutions prevented the majority investor from exercising control, failed to enforce judicial decisions effectively, blocked or tolerated restrictions on access to the construction site and then used the resulting delays to justify terminating the concession. The chronology presented by MABCO shows that it says it was deprived of effective control despite holding 98 percent of the shares, was unable to return fully to the site and repeatedly sought government intervention before penalties and termination procedures followed.
That is why the coming dispute could become more than another arbitration over money.
For Albania, it may become a test of whether the state can convince an international tribunal that its institutions acted consistently, impartially and in accordance with both the concession agreement and international investment protections.
For foreign investors watching the case, the question will be broader: whether court decisions and contractual rights in Albania can be relied upon when a major investment becomes entangled in political, institutional and shareholder conflict.
And for Albanian taxpayers, previous arbitration cases offer a more immediate warning. When governments lose international disputes, the financial consequences do not remain with the officials who made the decisions. They eventually become liabilities of the state.
With MABCO speaking of an exposure of around 320 million euros, the Vlora Airport conflict could therefore become not only a battle over who was responsible for the failure to complete the airport, but potentially one of the most expensive tests yet of Albania’s relationship with foreign investors.
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