1.2. The Legal Relevance of Gastronomy In recent decades, gastronomy has gained recognition as a legal and policyrelevant category. Instruments such as the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage8 have explicitly included food-related traditions within their scope. At the same time, European Union legislation9 has developed comprehensive frameworks for the protection of traditional food products through quality schemes, such as geographical indications (GIs), designation of origin (DOs), and traditional specialities guaranteed (TSGs). These developments have prompted legal scholars and institutions alike to consider gastronomy not merely as a reflection of cultural life, but as an object of law in its own right—one that intersects with multiple regulatory fields and seen as an independent disciplinary legal field.10 Indeed, gastronomy now occupies a complex legal space shaped by food law, intellectual property rights, environmental regulation, health standards, and cultural heritage protection. It is also intrinsically linked to tourism policy, particularly in the emerging field of gastronomic tourism, which positions local food systems as vectors for economic development, cultural exchange, and territorial branding.11 In this context, the Albanian legal framework reflects both certain promising developments and areas that still require further attention. Albania possesses a rich repository of traditional agricultural products, culinary practices, and biocultural diversity that lend themselves naturally to protection under both EU quality schemes and international heritage frameworks. Yet, despite the formal ratification of the UNESCO Convention in 2006 and the transposition of several EU directives in food law and quality certification, the country has yet to establish an integrated legal and institutional approach that recognises gastronomy as a 8 Ratified by Law no. 9490, dated 13.3.2006, OG 24/2006. 9 Regulation (EU) 2024/1143 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 on geographical indications for wine, spirit drinks and agricultural products, as well as traditional specialities guaranteed and optional quality terms for agricultural products, amending Regulations (EU) No 1308/2013, (EU) 2019/787 and (EU) 2019/1753 and repealing Regulation (EU) No 1151/2012, OJ L, 2024/1143. 10 Recently food law has become a separate academic field within law studies. See for example: Emily M Broad Leib and Baylen J Linnekin, ‘Food Law & Policy: An Essential Part of Today’s Legal Academy’. Available at < https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3139958> accessed 19 August 2025; Alberto Alemanno and Simone Gabbi (eds), Foundations of EU Food Law and Policy: Ten Years of the European Food Safety Authority (Routledge 2016); Altinay Urazbaeva and others (eds), The Functional Field of Food Law: Reconciling the Market and Human Rights (Brill | Wageningen Academic 2019) <https://brill.com/view/title/68547> accessed 19 August 2025. 11 For example see Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and Ministry of Turism: Draft National Strategy of Agritourism Development in Albania, January 2024. <https://konsultimipublik.gov.al/Konsultime/ Detaje/696> accessed 21 August 2025). 470 NADA DOLLANI
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