producer interest. The lack of a dedicated legal framework to incentivise and protect these schemes within a gastronomic or cultural context has diminished their impact. Simultaneously, the normative treatment of gastronomy as intangible cultural heritage remains incipient. The Cultural Heritage Act”68 provides for the registration of intangible heritage elements, and several traditional dishes have been inscribed in the National Register. Still, the legal protection remains primarily symbolic, lacking enforceable rights or sustainable support mechanisms. There is no framework that concretely operationalises gastronomy as a cultural resource, nor one that binds together its cultural, environmental, and economic dimensions in law. Agrotourism emerges as a promising legal innovation that offers a potential platform for integration. Under Council of Ministers’ Decision No. 22/2018,69 agrotourism is conceived not merely as rural accommodation but as a certified legal status requiring agricultural production, hospitality, and adherence to traditional methods. However, its regulatory potential remains largely underexploited in the absence of a broader normative strategy that links agrotourism to intellectual property regimes, cultural heritage protection, and territorial branding. What emerges from this analysis is the need for a deliberate legal reconfiguration. The construction of a unified legal framework—possibly through an intersectoral legal act on Agrotourism, Sustainable Gastronomy and Protection of Territorial Identity—could enable the convergence of existing sectoral regimes. The Draft National Strategy of Agrotourism Development in Albania provides for the adoption of a Framework Act on Multifunctionality as well as another legal act on Agrotourism.70 Such a law should not aim to duplicate existing instruments but to coordinate them: recognising gastronomic heritage as a legal object; linking food quality schemes to cultural preservation; integrating agrotourism certification with collective and developmental IP-based protection; and embedding all of this within rural development policy, equity, historical continuity and cultural identity. Without a systemic approach, Albania risks reducing gastronomy to a commercial tourist attraction, stripping it of its cultural meaning and losing the very authenticity. Reforming the legal and institutional framework ensures Albania’s compliance 68 Law No. 27/2018 “On Cultural Heritage and Museums OG 86/2018, amended OG 192/2024. 69 OG 3/2018; OG 142/2018; OG 114/2019; OG 83/2023. 70 Regjistri Elektroni për Njoftimet dhe Konsultimet Publike, ‘Strategjia Kombëtare e Zhvillimit të Agroturizmit në Shqipëri’ (Ministria e Bujqësisë dhe Zhvillimit Rural 31 January 2024) p. 54 <https:// konsultimipublik.gov.al/Konsultime/Detaje/696> accessed 21 August 2025. 484 NADA DOLLANI
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