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Italien bringt wieder Migranten ins Nicht-EU-Land Albanien

Italiens rechtsgerichtete Regierung hat einen dritten Versuch unternommen, außerhalb der EU über Asylverfahren zu entscheiden. 49 Migranten wurden per Schiff in umstrittene Aufnahmezentren nach Albanien gebracht.

Nach einer monatelangen Pause sind erneut Dutzende Asylsuchende von Italien in umstrittene Aufnahmezentren in Albanien gebracht worden. Am Dienstagmorgen lief ein Schiff der italienischen Marine mit 49 Flüchtlingen an Bord im Hafen der albanischen Stadt Shengjin ein, wie die italienische Nachrichtenagentur Ansa berichtete. Dort soll nun über deren Asylanträge entschieden werden.

Bei den Migranten handelt es sich nach Angaben von Ansa um Männer aus Bangladesch, Ägypten, Gambia und der Elfenbeinküste. Vor der Fahrt nach Albanien waren sie auf dem Weg über das Mittelmeer nach Europa auf einem Boot vor der italienischen Mittelmeerinsel Lampedusa gestoppt worden.

Seit vielen Jahren gehört Italien zu den Ländern, die von der Fluchtbewegung über das Mittelmeer besonders betroffen sind. Zwar kamen vergangenes Jahr deutlich weniger Migranten an Italiens Küsten an als noch 2023. Im Januar sind jedoch laut der Regierung in Rom wieder mehr als 3.000 Menschen dort eingetroffen - das sind mehr als doppelt so viele wie im gleichen Vorjahreszeitraum (etwa 1.300).
Italiens Premierministerin Giorgia Meloni bei einem Treffen mit dem albanischen Premierminister Edi Rama

Kontroverses „Albanien-Modell“

Italien ist der erste Staat der Europäischen Union, der außerhalb der EU Lager errichtet hat, um dort über Asylanträge von Migranten zu entscheiden. Die rechtsgerichtete Ministerpräsidentin Giorgia Meloni und ihr albanischer Kollege Edi Rama hatten im November 2023 die Einrichtung der von Italien betriebenen Aufnahmelager für Asylbewerber in dem Nicht-EU-Land vereinbart.

Das „Albanien-Modell“ ist umstritten. Menschenrechtsorganisationen kritisierten das Abkommen scharf. Die Lager zur Auslagerung der Asylverfahren gingen im Oktober in Betrieb, die ersten Überstellungen wurden aber von Gerichten gestoppt und die Menschen wieder nach Italien zurückgeschickt.
Ein Dorf in Albanien empfängt erste Flüchtlinge für Italien

Regierung versus Justiz

Die ersten beiden Versuche waren an der Justiz gescheitert. Nach Auffassung der Richter kamen die nach Albanien gebrachten Migranten nicht aus sicheren Herkunftsländern, in die sie zurückgeschickt werden könnten. Die italienischen Richter beriefen sich in ihrer Entscheidung auf ein Urteil des Europäischen Gerichtshofs (EuGH) in Luxemburg, wonach Herkunftsländer von Migranten nur vollständig als sicher eingestuft werden können, nicht aber einzelne Landesteile.

Um diese juristische Hürde künftig zu umgehen, verabschiedete Italiens Regierung ein Dekret, das alle Teile der 19 Länder, die auf der Liste der sicheren Herkunftsländer stehen, für „sicher“ erklärt. Richter fochten aber auch diese neue Regelung an.

Auf Grund der ungeklärten Rechtslage ist daher wie bereits bei den ersten beiden Versuchen unklar, ob die Migranten wie eigentlich vorgesehen das beschleunigte Asylverfahren in den Lagern auf albanischem Boden durchlaufen oder doch nach Italien gebracht werden müssen. Der Europäische Gerichtshof will im Februar klären, ob das Vorgehen Italiens mit EU-Recht vereinbar ist.

▻https://www.dw.com/de/italien-bringt-wieder-migranten-ins-nicht-eu-land-albanien/a-71433244

Five people sent to Albania detention centers are returned to Italy

Under the 2023 deal between Italy and Albania, adult males rescued in the Mediterranean Sea would be sent to Italian-run detention centers in Albania to have their asylum claims processed. Pregnant women and children, however, are exempted.

An Italian navy ship with 49 people rescued in international waters docked in Albania on Tuesday (January 28) for the processing of their asylum applications, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Five of the passengers, however, were said to have been returned to Italy.

Citing local media reports, AP said two Bangladeshis, two Gambians, and one Ivorian were sent back to Italy, four because they were minors. A fifth was reported to have been deemed a “vulnerable” person.

The other 44 passengers who were reported to be mostly from Bangladesh, Egypt, Ivory Coast, and Gambia are being held at Albania’s Gjader facility, a former military airport, where their asylum applications will be processed.

In line with the Italian - Albania deal ratified in 2024, only adult males rescued in the Mediterranean Sea could be sent to the Italian-run detention centers in Albania. People who are deemed “vulnerable” such as children, elderly, and the sick are exempted.
’Impossible to identify the vulnerable at sea’

The Italian Juridical Association for Immigration Studies (ASGI), a group of independent lawyers and scholars focused on migrant rights, published a report last June raising concerns about the proposed procedure of assessing the needs of those rescued while at sea to determine their immediate transfer to Albania.

“it is practically impossible to carry out a screening with respect to the identification of all vulnerabilities at the same time as rescue at sea ... Despite knowing that asylum seekers with special needs should be brought to Italy, it is already assumed that it will be impossible to identify them before disembarking in Shengjin,” ASGI wrote in the report.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a youth-led human rights organization, outlined three contact points where rescued individuals are assessed for their vulnerability: one on the Italian Coast Guard vessel; one on the naval shop carrying people to Albania; and the last in the port of Schengjin.

According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, only those who visibly and undoubtedly fit the description of “vulnerable” such as women, children, elderly, and disabled persons would be exempted from being sent to Albania. People with hidden vulnerabilities such as mental disorders, and experience of torture of sexual violence would risk being subjected to border control procedures in prison-like centers.
A third try

The arrival of the Italian vessel marks the third attempt by Italy to implement its controversial 670 million euro ($730 million) deal with Albania to host migrant detention and processing centers.

Last October and November, Italian judges refused to approve the detention of two groups of mostly Bangladesh and Egyptian men at the Albanian centers. In their ruling, the Court cited the European Court of Justice (ECJ) decisions on migrant safety to justify that the migrants’ countries of origin were not safe enough to return to should their asylum applications be rejected, because not all areas of the country could be considered safe.

The ECJ is expected to assess whether Italy’s outsourcing of its migration and asylum policies to Albania aligns with EU laws in the coming weeks.

Even before these legal tensions were brewing, two Italian prison officers’ unions—the Italian Autonomous Confederation of Penitentiary Police and the Officers’ Union Coordination—protested about the deployment of 50 correctional officers to Albania, saying the migrant centers were “like prison camps”.

▻https://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/62522/five-people-sent-to-albania-detention-centers-are-returned-to-italy

Migranti, i giudici non convalidano i trattenimenti in Albania: torneranno a Bari

La decisione dei magistrati della Corte di Appello di Roma: giudizio sospeso e atti rinviati alla Corte di giustizia europea.

I giudici della Corte di Appello di Roma hanno deciso di non convalidare i trattenimenti dei 43 migranti rinchiusi nei centri costruiti dall’Italia in Albania. E di rinviare gli atti alla Corte di giustizia europea. I migranti devono dunque essere liberati e saranno riportati, conferma il Viminale, in Italia, a Bari, su mezzi della guardia costiera.
Il terzo no

È il terzo no all’esperimento del governo Meloni che, nonostante due precedenti dinieghi, una sentenza della Cassazione che affidava sì ai ministri il compito di stilare la lista dei paesi sicuri ma anche ai giudici il dovere di verificarne la validità rispetto ai migranti e i rinvii pregiudiziali pendenti davanti alla Corte di giustizia europea, aveva deciso di forzare la mano. Muovendo un’altra volta, la terza, il pattugliatore della Marina militare da Lampedusa alle coste albanesi carico di un gruppetto di migranti.

I giudici però hanno deciso ancora di annullare il fermo disposto dal questore, di sospendere il giudizio, rinviare la questione di nuovo all’Europa e liberare dunque i migranti.
Il provvedimento

“Il giudizio – si legge nel provvedimento firmato dai magistrati - va sospeso nelle more della decisione della Corte di Giustizia. Poiché per effetto della sospensione è impossibile osservare il termine di quarantotto ore previsto per la convalida, deve necessariamente essere disposta la liberazione del trattenuto, così come ha ripetutamente affermato la Corte Costituzionale in casi analoghi”.

Alla Corte europea, che il 4 ottobre del 2024 aveva emesso una sentenza spiegando che un Paese può essere ritenuto sicuro solo se lo è in ogni sua parte di territori, i giudici chiedono se la direttiva vada interpretata in modo da dichiarare non sicuro anche un Paese in cui vi siano una o più categorie di persone minacciate o perseguitate.
Le udienze

Nel centro di Gjader, dei 49 migranti arrivati martedì scorso, ne erano rimasti 43, dopo che sei di loro erano stati ritrasferiti in Italia perché minorenni o vulnerabili e quindi non sottoponibili alla procedura accelerata di frontiera.

Le udienze per la convalida dei trattenimenti erano iniziate nella prima mattinata di oggi. In videoconferenza si sono presentati i richiedenti asilo assistiti dai legali incaricati in extremis e sei magistrati della Corte d’appello di Roma, tutti pescati in realtà dalla sezione immigrazione del tribunale civile che era stata esautorata dal governo, modificando il codice di procedura penale, per scegliere giudici ritenuti meno politicizzati.
Le richieste d’asilo respinte

Le loro richieste di asilo erano state tutte giudicate già ieri “manifestamente infondate” dalla Commissione territoriale per l’esame dell’iter delle domande di protezione internazionale e dunque respinte. Ora i migranti avranno appena 7 giorni per fare ricorso contro il rigetto della loro domanda. Uno spazio di tempo che per l’Asgi (Associazione studi giuridici sull’immigrazione) rende «concretamente impossibile l’esercizio del diritto di difesa», in aperto contrasto con la Costituzione, la Cedu e le direttive europee.
Le precedenti bocciature

Nelle altre due precedenti occasioni, ad ottobre e a novembre, i giudici avevano sospeso il trattenimento e i migranti erano stati tutti riportati in Italia.

La prima pronuncia risale al 18 ottobre e ha riguardato 12 richiedenti asilo bengalesi ed egiziani portati nel centro di Gjader. I giudici, si legge nelle ordinanze simili tra loro, hanno negato la convalida dei trattenimenti per «l’impossibilità di riconoscere come ’Paesi sicuri’ gli Stati di provenienza delle persone trattenute, con la conseguenza dell’inapplicabilità della procedura di frontiera e, come previsto dal protocollo, del trasferimento al di fuori del territorio albanese delle persone migranti, che hanno quindi diritto ad essere condotte in Italia».

La seconda decisione è dell’11 novembre. Sette gli stranieri coinvolti, sempre egiziani e bengalesi. Rispetto al primo caso, il governo aveva nel frattempo emanato un decreto per definire la nuova lista di Paesi sicuri. Il provvedimento non è tuttavia servito ad evitare un esito diverso del giudizio.

I magistrati hanno infatti sospeso il giudizio sulla convalida del trattenimento rimettendo tutto nelle mani della Corte di giustizia europea. Ma la sostanza non è cambiata: i richiedenti asilo sono stati liberati. Nello stesso tempo, i giudici hanno chiesto alla Corte di Lussemburgo chiarimenti sulla compatibilità, definita “dubbia”, del decreto del governo con le norme europee. Il 25 febbraio è attesa la pronuncia su questa materia da parte dell’organismo Ue.

▻https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2025/01/31/news/trattenimenti_migranti_albania_sentenza-423973949/?ref=RHLF-BG-P1-S1-T1
#justice

Meloni’s Albania deportation experiment has failed

Last Tuesday (28 January), as Giorgia Meloni’s government resumed its attempts to force people seeking safety and a better life in Europe into prison camps in Albania, electricity broke down in the port of Shengjin.

As port staff struggled to get the lights back on, officials realised that among the people they were incarcerating were four children.

They had to be taken to Italy — now the third time this has happened. The camps have sat empty since they were opened, home only to stray dogs.

This power failure reflects the challenges facing Meloni’s plan. She has staked not only her moral standing but also her credibility on this deal succeeding, yet it continues to be mired in uncertainty and setbacks.

On Friday (31 January), the courts ordered that the remaining 43 people taken to Albania were to be returned to Italy.

Meloni has claimed that people exercising their legal right to claim asylum, or humanitarians providing aid, are criminals. But it is her attempt to strongarm her way past Italian and international law that has led to this mess.

With each transfer to Albania, the government has claimed to only be returning non-vulnerable people to safe places.

We know that no one who puts their life at risk in a sea crossing has come from a place of safety, and all face some form of risk.

Italian authorities have proven incapable of even conducting a ‘proper’ selection process. Meloni’s government has managed to deport minors and vulnerable people to Albania time and again. Even with the deck stacked in their favour, they exposed the deal for what it truly is — an inhumane and reckless political stunt.

And we know that the countries the government designates as “safe” are nothing of the sort, as the EU’s recent partial retreat on its Tunisia-funding has shown. Authorities in the country are selling sub-Saharan migrants as slaves, further fuelling a cycle of violence and exploitation.

Some of those shipped to Albania come from Egypt, whose government routinely jails human rights activists and dissidents.

Even after the Sisi regime’s security forces were infamously implicated in the death of an Italian student, Italian and EU politicians continued to fund those forces.

Let’s also not forget that most of those arriving on Italian shores have fled Libya; where they have been tortured and even sold into slavery from camps supported by Italian and EU funds.

These grim deals have fuelled human misery and have only made journeys more dangerous and deadly — which is why the Italian government is now placing all its hope in the Albania deal.
Propaganda stunt

It’s not just hope but hard cash that Meloni has thrown into the deal, which is set to cost the Italian public over €800m, with €100m squandered already. And other EU countries look set to follow suit.

Who gains? Not people incarcerated in camps, not Albanians sold on false promises of regeneration in the camp towns, and not Italians who need affordable homes and secure jobs instead of more wasted resources.

Beyond the political gains Meloni’s government hopes to reap from this propaganda stunt, the only economic beneficiaries are the corporate profiteers gouging the state to run camps, and perhaps the police agents being paid to lounge on the beach near empty facilities.

All of this has been tried before. The shameful UK’s deal to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda ended in expensive and illegal failure, with not a single person deported.

Australia’s offshore detention camps in Nauru — where people were held in brutal and squalid conditions at a cost of half a million Australian dollars per detainee — were found just this month to have violated international law by the UN’s human rights committee.

In short, every time these deals have been tried, they have hurt — or even killed — people, broken the law, and redistributed public funds to rich contractors.

Meloni’s reliance on Elon Musk to support the deal could not better symbolise how the wealthy and powerful scapegoat people crossing borders to divide us.

The longer this deal exists, the more all of our rights are at risk. As someone who was imprisoned by the EU’s most authoritarian government on trumped-up charges, I know all too well the dangers involved in policies that lock people up with no due process.

It’s not coincidental that the Meloni government is also seeking to drive through a sweeping attack on our civil liberties that begins with an attempt to ban detained migrants and prisoners from protesting the conditions they are being held in.

The political energy and resources being spent on deportations and prisons in Albania should instead be going toward supporting people; both those born here and those seeking a better life here.

And the naval ships ferrying people across the Adriatic could instead be used to rescue them, in a year where at least 2,200 more people have drowned on our doorstep.

It’s time for Meloni’s government to face reality — this unlawful and, hopefully, unsuccessful plan is embarrassing Italy on the world stage. And as other European countries seek to copy Italy and produce their own return hubs, they should learn from our country’s cruel, expensive, experiment.

▻https://euobserver.com/migration/ar6aec9598