Albania assigned the conditions of a citizenship clause to a decision

Albanian law allows a foreigner to be naturalised outside the age, language, history and residence conditions that ordinary naturalisation imposes, where the state has a special interest in the person. In May the article carrying that power was rewritten. The rewritten text assigns the conditions, the criteria, the vetting rules and the body that would assess applications to a decision of the Council of Ministers, which two phrase searches of the gazette index did not find on 21 September.

The clause, as it now reads

Law no. 113/2020 on citizenship sets out ordinary naturalisation at Article 8 and this route at Article 9. The consolidated text published by the Centre for Official Publications records Article 9 as amended twice: by law no. 77/2023 of 2 May 2024, and by law no. 49/2026 of 8 May 2026.

The 2026 amendment was not a light touch. By the note the consolidated text carries, it changed the article’s title, changed points 1, 2 and 3, changed the numbering, and added two new points. The title now reads “Natyralizimi për interes shtetëror” — naturalisation for state interest.

Point 1 provides that a foreigner acquires Albanian citizenship outside the conditions set by Article 8 on age, language and historical knowledge and the period of lawful stay, where the Albanian state has a special state interest in creating a stable link with that person, on account of the qualities, abilities and specific beneficial circumstances of the individual or of their activity, private or public.

The relief is personal. Point 3 provides that the naturalisation of family members of a person naturalised under this article, where it is requested, is subject to the conditions and requirements of Article 8. Point 3/1 provides that a foreigner under 18 acquires citizenship under point 1 only with the consent of both parents or the legal guardian, and of the child where the child is between 14 and 18. Nothing in the article extends the exemption from Article 8 to a household.

No sum appears in Point 1, or anywhere else in the article.

A minister has to stand behind the application

Point 1/1, one of the two points added in 2026, provides that the special state interest is identified, supported and guaranteed before the President of the Republic by the minister covering the relevant field, and then provides that applications under the article are not accepted without the supporting and guaranteeing documentation from those authorities.

That is a necessary condition, and the text does not make it a sufficient one. Nothing in it says an application carrying the documentation must be accepted, or that it will succeed.

Point 2/1, the other addition, sits at the far end of the process: requests assessed as lawful are forwarded to the President, with a proposal to grant citizenship, by the minister responsible for internal affairs.

Point 4 disapplies Articles 17 and 18 of the same law, which govern the submission and the examination of an application. Whether those two are the whole of the law’s ordinary procedure was not established here.

Where the conditions were sent

Point 2, rewritten in 2026, is where the substance was placed. It provides that the application procedure and institutional interaction, the conditions, the criteria, the circumstances, the documentation and verification of the state interest, and the specific rules for security and integrity vetting, are determined by a decision of the Council of Ministers.

The same point gives that decision a second task: it is also to establish a special state agency, under the minister responsible for internal affairs, competent to review, verify and assess applications, and the circumstances that form the state interest.

On 21 September 2026 a full-text search of the official gazette’s index returned five documents for the phrase “natyralizimi për interes shtetëror”. All five are the legislation itself — the consolidated law in two formats, the amending law in two records, and the gazette issue that published it. None of the five is a decision of the Council of Ministers. A search for “interes të posaçëm shtetëror” together with “shtetësi” returned two documents, both the consolidated law.

Those searches were run against an index that does carry government decisions and does carry 2026 instruments: a query for decisions of the Council of Ministers returns over eleven thousand documents, including one adopted on 3 September 2026, and a query for “49/2026” returns the amending law and the decree promulgating it. That does not prove the index complete: a working index can still be missing a document, be behind, or hold text a phrase search does not reach.

What the searches establish is that the decision was not found by those phrases on that date. A decision may exist under wording the queries did not reach, or may not have been published. Not found is a narrower finding than does not exist, and this article does not make the larger one. Nor does this article establish what such a decision, if it exists, contains.

Dates, and how the date was arrived at

Law 49/2026 was adopted on 8 May 2026 and promulgated by decree no. 333 of 1 June 2026 by President Bajram Begaj. The gazette record puts its publication in Fletorja Zyrtare no. 116 at 5 June 2026. Article 4 of the law provides that it enters into force fifteen days after publication in the gazette, which gives 20 June 2026.

That date is arrived at, not quoted. It depends on the gazette record’s publication date being the one the law counts from, and on fifteen days being counted as fifteen calendar days. Neither of those was verified against a separate source for this article.

The amending law records that it came before the Assembly “me propozimin e një deputeti” — on the proposal of a deputy.

What this article does not establish

It does not establish that Article 9 is a programme, or that a route under it is open to applications now. The article confers a discretion exercised by the President on a ministerial proposal, and it names no amount of money.

It does not establish how many people have been naturalised under Article 9.

It does not establish any link between Article 9 and the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 29 April 2025. Albania is not a member of the European Union. It is a candidate for membership, and nothing was read for this article on whether candidate status bears on this provision.

It does not cover the other change law 49/2026 made: the repeal of point 3 of Article 8, and a new Article 8/a on citizenship through marriage. That is a separate subject.