A wave of multi-billion-dollar agreements between the United States and countries in the Western Balkans is reshaping the region’s energy and investment landscape, combining strategic geopolitical goals with an expanding footprint by companies linked to US President Donald Trump and his associates.
The latest deals, announced around the Three Seas Initiative summit in Dubrovnik, span gas infrastructure, liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply, and energy hubs, as well as emerging sectors such as artificial intelligence and data infrastructure. They build on earlier, more controversial real estate ventures spearheaded by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, some of which have since stalled amid legal and political challenges.
US officials frame the new agreements as part of a broader strategy to deepen ties with Southeast Europe and reduce dependence on Russian energy. Critics, however, warn of governance risks, environmental consequences and opaque deal-making processes.
“President Trump is opening a new era of cooperation with southern, and central and eastern Europe,” US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at the Dubrovnik forum.
Southern Interconnector deal
One of the agreements signed at the forum concerns the Southern Interconnector, a long-delayed gas pipeline linking Bosnia & Herzegovina with Croatia. The project is designed to bring US LNG from the terminal on the Croatian island of Krk into Bosnia, reducing the country’s reliance on Russian supplies routed through Serbia.
The agreement was signed on April 28 in Dubrovnik by the Chair of Bosnia’s Council of Ministers Borjana Krišto and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković. The pipeline will run from Split and Zagvozd in Croatia through several Bosnian cities, with branches reaching other major urban centres.
A statement from the Council of Ministers said the deal would ensure “a secure and stable energy supply and improving conditions,” enabling “the diversification of natural gas routes and sources” and supporting “the energy independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
Krišto described the agreement as “a major step forward,” adding that she was “Grateful to our US partners.”
The project is expected to be financed and led by US-based AAFS Infrastructure and Energy LLC, run by Trump-linked figures including Jesse Binnall and Joseph Flynn, the brother of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. AAFS has said it plans to invest around €1.5bn.
The US has previously signalled strong support for the project, with its embassy in Sarajevo saying that “American private-sector investors can ensure that construction of the Southern Interconnection will move quickly and will help secure affordable and reliable US liquefied natural gas.”
Concerns over transparency and costs
Despite official backing, the pipeline has drawn criticism from anti-corruption watchdogs and energy experts.
Even the European Union has warned Bosnia that plans to award the gas pipeline contract to a US-linked company without a tender could jeopardise its bid to join the bloc, The Guardian reported in April, quoting a letter from EU ambassador to Sarajevo Luigi Soreca.
Transparency International Bosnia and Herzegovina warned previously that proposed legal amendments tied to the project “eliminates any possibility of competition” and could create a “dangerous precedent” by directly designating a private investor.
Pippa Gallop of Bankwatch said in a statement emailed to IntelliNews the framework would bypass the state-owned transmission company. “We’ve analysed the proposed amendments, which directly appoint this Trump-linked, newly-formed company AAFS as the investor instead of [Bosnian] Federation-owned BH Gas — with no tender,” she said.
She added that the arrangements could breach concession laws and rely on “opaque negotiations between the Federation government and AAFS, raising red flags for corruption and excessive transfer of financial risks to the Federation”.
“One way or another, the public is bound to end up paying, either via their bills or the Federal budget,” she said.
Environmental groups have also raised concerns that new gas infrastructure could lock the region into fossil fuel dependence.
“Governments are still planning new gas pipelines and power plants despite repeated energy crises,” Gallop said in a joint statement by civil society groups. Such investments, she warned, risk becoming stranded assets or requiring heavy subsidies.
She also questioned the scale of the project, noting that gas currently accounts for less than 3% of Bosnia’s energy supply. “The pipeline would anyway come too late to replace Russian gas, as we expect it would take up to a decade to complete,” she said.
Also this week, Albania signed agreements with US-linked companies aimed at transforming it into a regional energy hub. Under a 20-year deal, AKTOR LNG USA will supply 1bn cubic metres of LNG annually from 2030. The agreement, signed in Tirana in the presence of Prime Minister Edi Rama, is valued at around $6bn.
Separately, a transatlantic investment consortium announced plans to build a €50bn artificial intelligence (AI)-focused data centre and innovation campus in Croatia, in what it described as the largest investment in the country’s history and one of the biggest private US investments in Europe.
Trump-linked projects face backlash
The latest wave of energy deals follows earlier high-profile investments linked to Kushner’s Affinity Partners, which have proven contentious.
In Serbia, a planned $500mn redevelopment of the former Yugoslav army General Staff complex in Belgrade — potentially Europe’s first Trump-branded hotel — has been derailed by legal challenges and public protests.
The General Staff buildings remain a sensitive symbol in Serbia, widely seen as a memorial to victims of Nato’s bombing, making their demolition and redevelopment by an American company unacceptable to many Serbs.
On top of that, the project became embroiled in a corruption investigation, with Culture Minister Nikola Selakovic and others accused of falsifying documents to remove heritage protection from the site. Selakovic and his co-defendants went on trial in February.
President Aleksandar Vučić said the collapse of the deal cost Serbia dearly. “Unfortunately for the state and the people, we are big losers. We lost an exceptional investment of at least €750mn,” he said.
Kushner also faces scrutiny in Albania over plans for a $1.4bn luxury resort on Sazan Island, a former military zone.
Kushner’s investment plans on Sazan have been promoted by the Albanian government as part of efforts to attract high-end tourism and foreign capital, but the project has faced growing domestic and international criticism from environmental groups, who argue it undermines Albania’s commitments as an EU candidate country, particularly in the area of environmental protection and biodiversity conservation.
In a letter sent on January 23 to Prime Minister Edi Rama and Environment Minister Sofjan Jaupaj, the groups called for “the immediate suspension of any executive or parliamentary decision related to the advancement of this project”, which is linked to a company owned by Kushner.
Investment ambitions
In Bosnia’s Serb-majority Republika Srpska, leader Milorad Dodik is actively courting US investment, leveraging ties with Trump and his network.
“I trust Trump as a person who can change narratives that were disastrous for Serbs and Republika Srpska,” Dodik said in a recent interview with Bloomberg. “The new administration has a new framework. They want to preserve peace and to do business here.”
Dodik said talks were underway with US partners, including Bechtel, on infrastructure projects such as highways and hydroelectric plants.
Dodik’s outreach comes shortly after US sanctions on him, imposed under the Biden administration, were lifted. The Bosnian Serb politician is an outspoken fan of both US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
After the sanctions were lifted, Dodik visited Washington in February together with fellow Bosnian Serb leaders, a trip he called an “undeniable success” after meeting with several congressmen and senators.
At the beginning of April, the US president’s son Donald Trump Jr travelled to Banja Luka, the administrative centre of the Serb-run region, as a guest of Dodik’s son Igor Dodik, meeting with politicans and business figures. The trip was widely viewed as a show of support for the former Republika Srpska president.
Dodik has for years challenged Bosnia’s post-war constitutional order and has repeatedly threatened to withdraw Republika Srpska from key state institutions, raising fears among Western governments of renewed instability in the Balkans. He remains under UK sanctions, and several US senators have called for sanctions on him to be re-imposed.
Geographic shift
For Washington, the deals represent both economic opportunity and geopolitical leverage in a region where Russian and, increasingly, Chinese influence has been significant.
However, critics say the combination of large-scale investment, political ties and weak governance structures raises concerns about transparency, public accountability and long-term sustainability.
Transparency International has warned that opaque decision-making around major projects is a growing vulnerability across the Western Balkans, increasing the risk of corruption and misuse of public funds.
Similar concerns have been raised in the past about major investments by firms from other parts of the world, notably China and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Small states and transition economies are particularly vulnerable to ‘corrosive capital', a concept pioneered by think-tank the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and defined as international financing to countries that lacks transparency, accountability and market orientation. The former Yugoslav republics are both small and in transition and as such have been the target of what analysts from CIPE and its partners say are un-transparent investments with a geopolitical agenda.
In an interview with IntelliNews in 2021, Eric Hontz, who leads CIPE's work on corrosive capital, detailed projects such as the first section of the Bar-Boljare highway across Montenegro; Podgorica had struggled for a long time to find partners for the project to replace an unsafe round through mountainous territory until China stepped in in 2014. However, the government later struggled to replay the loan to find construction, approaching the EU for help.
Similarly, CIPE noted questions surround the sale of the massive mining and smelting complex RTB Bor to the Chinese company Zijin, which was followed just days later by the same company’s purchase of the nearby deposits of copper and gold at Cukaru Peri.
More recently, in 2025, a study by the Carnegie Europe think-tank warned the European Union faces a mounting challenge in the Western Balkans as a surge of foreign investment, much of it from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), tests the bloc’s ability to promote transparent governance.
Detailed foreign-funded real estate developments including marinas and coastal resorts, arguing that the terms under which these projects proceed risk entrenching weak institutions rather than preparing countries for EU membership.
The think-tank singled out a planned €35bn luxury tourism development in the coastal town of Ulcinj promoted by UAE developer Eagle Hills which, it said, was exempted from established procurement requirements. Civil society groups warned the deal enabled land allocation “without the need for public bidding”, while environmental groups raised alarms over potential damage to Velika Plaža and the Buna/Bojana Delta. The project was later suspended.
The examples cited by first CIPE and later Carnegie concern companies from China and the Middle East. However similar concerns, relating to transparency and environmental impact, are now being raised about US projects.
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