Italy: Meloni vows to continue with Albania plan despite empty centers

 

Italy: Meloni vows to continue with Albania plan despite empty centers

 

By  Sertan Sanderson Published on : 2024/12/24

https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/61907/italy-meloni-vows-to-continue-with-albania-plan-despite-empty-centers

 

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has doubled down on her intentions to outsource some asylum procedures to Albania. Italy's centers there have been empty for weeks after several legal defeats. A final decision from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the issue will likely take months.

 

After Meloni met with top ministers on Monday (December 23), her office issued statement saying the government had "the firm intention to continue to work […] on the so-called ‘innovative solutions’ to the migration phenomenon.''

 

This comes after Italian courts have intervened and paused the policy to send asylum seekers intercepted at sea to Albania on two separate occasions.

 

Judges initially rejected the measure arguing that the migrants did not originate from safe states since certain parts of their countries could not be considered safe. Meloni responded to this by issuing a new decree to declare 19 countries of origin to be safe in their entirety.

 

Later, Italy's Supreme Court ruled that individual judges could not overrule the government's new categorization of certain countries as being safe, which Meloni took as a sign of support for the government's plan for the Albania scheme to go ahead.

 

However, the Supreme Court added that judges in Italy could interject on a case-by-case basis, making Meloni's blanket policy unworkable in its current shape.

 

Judges have also raised doubts over the compliance of the Italian policy with EU law. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is expected to issue a ruling on the developments in the next few months.

 

Many human rights groups have been critical of the scheme.

 

 Meloni has vowed that the dormant migrant processing centers in Albania will eventually open but has given no concrete timeline on this.

 

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told the Corriere della Sera daily newspaper in an interview published on Monday that the centers were "ready and will be very useful to speed up the procedures for recognizing protection for those who are entitled to it, but above all for repatriating those who do not have the right."

 

3,000 beds in Albania remain empty

Meloni struck the controversial deal with her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama in November last year to send some migrants intercepted by Italian authorities in the open sea to the Balkan nation, building two major reception and processing centers on Albanian soil to house up to 3,000 people.

 

Italy has earmarked 650 million euros to run the centers over the next five years.

 

The first intercepted asylum seekers were sent to Albania in mid-October of this year, but were quickly rerouted to Italy due to a court order. A month later, another group arrived in Albania and was sent to Italy within days, also due to a court ruling. This means that the centers have sat mostly empty since their opening in October.

 

Under the Albania plan, only male migrants coming safe countries of origin who are intercepted by Italian navy and coastguard in international waters will be eligible to be sent to Albania. Women, children and vulnerable individuals would be exempt from the policy.

 

The Italian government has said that deportations of people whose asylum cases are rejected could happen more quickly from Albania, with planes intended to deport failed asylum seekers directly from Tirana International Airport.

 

Despite recent set-backs, Meloni said during a meeting with her ministers on Monday that there was "strong consensus" over the need for new strategies to tackle immigration, reaching beyond the confines of Italy.

 

Meloni said that during a meeting with other EU nations in Brussels last week, she found that there was support for seeking such new approaches across the bloc. Her office said that the plan to process migrants in third countries outside the EU, such as Albania, had received strong backing from other EU leaders, highlighting reported interest in particular from the heads of Italy, Denmark, the Netherlands, Cyprus, Greece, Malta, the Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden and Hungary.

 

However, this statement has not been independently confirmed, and the national governments of various EU member states remain at loggerheads about how to balance humanitarian obligations with national security concerns.