Italy will set up two reception centers in Albania for migrants who have arrived by sea and have submitted an asylum application.
These centers should open next spring and initially accommodate three thousand migrants. The aim is to quickly increase its capacity and thus process 36,000 asylum applications per year in Albania.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who took office a year ago promising to limit the number of migrants reaching Italy by sea, announced the plan on Monday after a meeting in Rome with her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama.
“I consider this a truly European agreement, and I would like to say that it shows that it is possible to work together in managing migration flows,” Meloni said.
For many African and Asian migrants crossing from North Africa, Italy is the gateway to the European Union. Albania is not a member of the European Union.
The migrants “will remain in these centers for the time necessary to expeditiously process asylum claims and, if necessary, for repatriation,” Meloni said after her conversation with Rama. For his part, the Albanian Prime Minister stated, in Italian, that Albania is eager to help given its special relationship with Italy. Italy is Albania’s most important trading partner.
Meloni said that minors, pregnant women and vulnerable migrants will not be transferred to the reception centers to be built in Albania. She said, without giving further details, that the centers will be under Italian jurisdiction and that Albania will play a role in what she called external supervision – surveillance.
Other EU countries have often accused Italy of being lax in controlling migrants and looking the other way when they manage to leave Italian reception centers to travel to other EU countries.
A center for initial identification should be established in the Albanian port city of Shëngjin. Further inland, near Gjader, a center is planned where migrants await the outcome of the procedure.
Meloni is under pressure to do something about the increased number of boat migrants. This year, 145,000 people have already arrived in Italy on sometimes wrecked ships. In the same period last year there were 88,000. The main countries of origin of boat migrants this year are Guinea, Ivory Coast and Tunisia.
Meloni’s radical right-wing government, in which Matteo Salvini of Lega in particular is calling for tougher action against migrants without valid documents, has already increased the number of reception centers and increased prison sentences for those involved in human smuggling.
The Italian plan, which has been immediately attacked by members of the left-wing opposition as a restriction on the right to asylum, bears similarities to the British plan to house asylum seekers in Rwanda. Implementation of that plan has been delayed by a series of lawsuits.