Despite the Italian migrant centres in Albania officially opening in October, the facilities have lain empty over a legal dispute. Migrants are now once again being sent there, though the project remains a source of controversy as well as hope for local communities.
In the Albanian port of Shengjin, November’s icy coastal winds turn hands blue with the cold. The view of the water’s surface is dotted with rusted boats, which appear as if they have remained there, unmoved, for a long time. A truck cuts across the horizon, hauling away the last batches of debris left over from the construction of a migrant reception centre. The facility, set against the backdrop of empty port buildings and ships, looks sleek and modern. With its high metal walls and containers located inside, it resembles a prison.
Shengjin is set to be the first stop for irregular migrants caught by the Italian coast guard in international waters. Here they will be held for a limited time, undergoing a short interview and health check, before being moved to a detention centre in Gjader, around 20 kilometres inland.
The two facilities form the foundations of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s flagship immigration project. The idea behind it is simple – outsourcing migrant asylum procedures from Italy to Albania, which is just across the sea.
“It is a new, courageous, unprecedented path, but one that perfectly reflects the European spirit and has all the makings of a path to be taken with other non-EU nations as well,” Meloni declared to the Senate in February last year.
It is also proving a costly path: the building of the facilities alone has soaked up around 100 million euros already, with an estimated 700 million more to be spent over the five years of the agreement with Albania. Opposition politicians in Italy and a source closely connected to the Italian embassy in Tirana disclose that the final cost will be closer to 1 billion euros.
Only a specific group of migrants will come to Albania: adult men, physically and mentally healthy, from 19 countries deemed safe by the Italian government. Authorities aim to use the offshore facilities to fast-track the processing of their asylum claims – a procedure that sometimes takes years in Italy will be shortened to 28 days in the case of migrants brought to Albania.
That is, if the project finally get properly up and running. Despite being launched in October, Meloni’s plan has faced multiple setbacks in the Italian courts. The facilities built to detain up to 30,000 asylum seekers annually have so far been used only for two groups of migrants of Egyptian and Bangladeshi origin – one of 16 people and another of eight.
Both groups were ordered by the Civil Court of Rome to be returned to Italy immediately. But after a two-month hiatus, on January 26, an Italian Navy ship set sail with 49 migrants from those two countries on board, which arrived in Shengjin three days later, on January 28.
Headed home
Shengjin is a small resort town northwest of Tirana that attracts Albanian and foreign tourists during the summer months. In autumn, the town seems almost deserted, with empty bars lining the seaside promenade. Only in some bars can a few men be found drinking an afternoon beer.
One such place is a dingy tavern near the harbour, frequented by a group of Italian carabinieri and policemen who had emerged from behind the high gate of the reception centre. One of them sits on a plastic chair in front of the entrance and regards us from behind sunglasses.
“I didn’t volunteer to be here; I was assigned. I won’t say whether it’s good or bad, it’s just that the decision was made,” he says offhandedly.
Surely, the pay rate is higher than for serving at home, we ask?
“It depends on where you served before. I may come out a little better, someone else not necessarily. And the work? Now it’s mostly paperwork, because we don’t have any migrants. Basically, there’s no point in me being here. I’m going back in a couple of days, because it was decided that I would be more useful in [Italy],” he says.
There are many more like him. In December, more than half of the Italian officers were returned home, because the legal skirmishes between the Italian courts and the authorities will inevitably mean the project cannot start for at least another six months.
One main street leads from the port to the town centre. Along the way we meet a few locals, but most don’t want to talk about the reception centre. In this post-communist country, people are taught not to discuss political topics openly.
A few, however, enthusiastically argue that this project is an opportunity for local, small-scale entrepreneurs to make money; others are sure nothing good will come from it for them.
“What could the city possibly gain from it? After all, no one will make any money on these migrants, and Italian officials sit and eat at the hotel,” BIRN hears from one among a group of men in their 20s.
“We don’t want this camp for many reasons, but mostly because it will be against the rights of those migrants being sent here,” says one of two elderly men smoking cigarettes in the nearby hotel’s fancy restaurant. “They started their journey to be in Italy, not in Albania. Who has the right to change their route? And besides, for us there is nothing to be gained from it.
Dancing to a different beat
Before leaving Shengjin, we meet with an MP from the opposition Democratic Party of Albania, Agron Gjekmarkaj, who is from this coastal area. We talk in a restaurant near one of the local gas stations.
“People feel that this is purely a propaganda move by Prime Minister Meloni. Her country has enough capacity to receive these migrants at home. It’s just a matter of convincing her citizens that she has gotten rid of the problem. And what concerns us most is how our prime minister is using his power for her own interests,” Gjekmarkaj argues.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama of the ruling Socialist Party is a controversial figure, wielding power with a heavy hand in a country that continues to struggle with corruption, social injustice and high levels unemployment three and a half decades after the end of Communism.
“There is a perception that Prime Minister Rama has done Meloni a personal favour to strengthen his position with the Italian government,” Gjekmarkaj says. “This is not the first time he has done something like this. But for our country to build facilities reminiscent of prisons for migrants is just ruining our image.”
From what Gjekmarkaj and others say, no one – apart from the prime ministers themselves – and not even members of the ruling party knew about the Italian-Albanian project before it was officially announced. This is because, they say, Rama is not in the habit of consulting other officials about his decisions.
The Democratic Party MP argues that he is not against granting asylum to those fleeing from Africa or the Middle East. He stresses that Albanians are themselves a nation of migrants; today, more than 40 per cent of this nation of 5 million people work abroad due to the lack of prospects and low wages in their own country.
“However, we cannot accept being treated as a country on which others can dump their problems,” Gjekmarkaj adds.
He is not the only one to oppose the project. The Vatican, international NGOs and the Italian opposition, among others, have also expressed their doubts or disagreement.
“What remains in Albania is a colossal structure built by local entrepreneurs with the taxes of Italian families, a structure destined to rot. What remains in Albania is the face of Giorgia Meloni, the author of an unprecedented waste of resources, wanted only on an electoral whim,” wrote former Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi on X in November. “And the judges have nothing to do with this, make no mistake: the Albania operation does not hold up, both in terms of numbers and the law.”
Building walls and fences
Shengjin might be the planned first stop for irregular migrants, but if the Albanian operation does eventually take off, they will spend most of the time in the detention centre – a facility located further north, on a road which leads to the centre of a village called Gjader.
You can’t see the high steel fences from the heart of this small hamlet, but you can’t miss them going in or out of it. Those fences are an eyesore for the inhabitants, many of whom have relatives who have migrated themselves. Aleksander Preka, the village head, claims that some people felt it was testimony to how their loved ones are also treated abroad.
Whatever reservations they might have, however, pale in comparison to the potential benefits that the Italian investment promises.
“Until now, the people of Gjader saw only good things coming from this deal. They are selling more products, and they received a promise from the Italian embassy that they would get an improved energy system,” states Preka.
The detention centre – unlike the one in Shengjin – also brings with it a promise of better employment opportunities. BIRN met people who work there, either hired to clean or help construct the facilities. The 400-euro monthly salary that the camp’s authorities offer may not seem like much to Italians, but in Gjader it is an enticing offer. Preka says that once Meloni’s project gets under way, it will create a significant influx of jobs.
“We were promised by the municipal authorities that if the camp reaches its capacity, at least 150 people from the area will work there. And when we met with the Italian ambassador, we made a deal that if we don’t protest against the project, any additional workforce that will be needed will have to come from the village,” he says.
If these promises are kept, Meloni may have thrown Gjader a lifeline. The village used to have a state agricultural cooperative and a military airfield during Communism, which ensured the availability of work for anyone living here. But those times are long gone; Gjader is now depopulating at a steady clip.
Locals show us how many of the houses along the main road are abandoned as people leave for either the bigger cities or abroad. Agriculture and remittances from family members working in Italy, Germany or Austria are the main sources of income here. So even though we hear some concerns about the ethics of turning some of Gjader’s territory into a ‘prison’ for migrants headed to another country, no one with whom we talked directly opposes the project.
Rrok Rroku, who claims to be the former mayor of the commune in Gjader, states that despite his opposition to the current local administration, he also would have allowed the facilities to be built.
“Those who say that it’s a prison do so for political reasons. I have been inside the centre and the conditions there are really good. And yes, there are walls around it, because the people that will come here want to go to the European Union, so if there aren’t walls, we won’t be able to keep them in for even those 28 days,” he points out.
He also justifies Meloni’s project: “Migration is a problem for all of the European countries, even the developed ones. Some are building fences; some are building walls. If I live in my home with my family and 10 other people come, I can’t house and feed everyone.”
Dangerous precedent
Outside of Gjader, we come across many who openly criticise the plan cooked up by these two prime ministers. Even before the centres in Albania were finished, human rights organisations pointed out that Meloni and Rama’s project could prove a dangerous precedent in European migration law.
“Experience shows that offshore asylum schemes can’t be implemented in a way that respects people’s rights and international law,” says Judith Sunderland, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“The 16 men taken to Albania by an Italian Navy ship are being put at risk for the sake of a terrible experiment,” she comments about the group of migrants who were eventually returned to Bari in Italy by a court, but are likely to be part of the group of 49 who were sent back to Shengjin on January 25.
In the Albanian capital of Tirana, BIRN meets with Erida Skendaj, a lawyer and representative of the Albanian Helsinki Committee, which, like Sunderland, has had concerns about the project from the very outset. His organisation issued a statement and an open letter to the Albanian prime minister, demanding he rip up the deal, as it violates human rights and was adopted without public consultation.
“We have not received any response,” says Skendaj.
The lawyer is particularly worried about the fast-track asylum procedure, which she believes is aimed at deporting foreigners to their countries of origin as quickly as possible. “Besides, sending migrants to Albania, meaning outside the EU, is illegal. Non-EU countries do not provide the same protection of human rights as member countries,” she points out.
Less critical of the agreement is Albania’s ombudsman, Erinda Ballanca. As she welcomes us into her office, she puts things straight from a legal perspective: “The project and whether it was possible or not to implement, went through the Constitutional Court of Albania. It declared that the deal is in line with the law.”
Still, she has some concerns about certain parts of the project from a human rights perspective, especially the lack of transparency in the process of drafting and negotiating the agreement, as well as the double standards shown towards migrants.
“Those who come to our country to ask for asylum are not held in the detention centres, whereas other migrants will be sent to the Italian facilities, also in Albania, which they cannot leave. This could be discrimination,” Ballanca points out.
She presented those doubts to the Constitutional Court, which acknowledged that the Italian law – meaning EU law – must be applied and prevail in that case. “But we are not against the agreement in principle,” she adds.
Facility fears
People who have had the chance to visit the centres voice their concerns as well. Damien Boeslager, a member of the European Parliament from the Volt Europa party, inspected the facility in Gjader in November.
“It’s very much a container village, reminding me of similar facilities in EU member states. It looks very uncomfortable, very prison-like. It’s mostly concrete with very high walls around it – not a place where you’d want human beings to be,” he says.
Boeslager thinks the Italian government has merely created an ex-territorial camp in Albania, while everything would be much better if it were located in Italy. “It’s got a very small capacity, so it’s not a systemic solution. This is a propaganda move to send the signal that migration is being dealt with,” he claims.
But a number of European leaders don’t seem too concerned about the humanitarian aspect of outsourcing the processing of asylum claims. On the contrary, Meloni’s flagship project is being observed with great interest from the outside.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, openly called on other member states to “explore the idea of developing return hubs outside the EU”. Keir Starmer, the prime minister of the UK – which had already tried to implement a plan of relocating asylum seekers and irregular migrants to Rwanda under the previous Conservative government – admitted that he had discussed the concept of the Albanian project with Meloni herself.
And in Albania, more than one source told BIRN that representatives of the Dutch government had visited the centre in Gjader and inquired about the possibility of building a similar facility.
This interest petered out as soon as Meloni’s program hit a legal speed bump. Days before the official inauguration of the centres on October 11, the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) ruled that a state cannot be deemed a “safe third country” by any EU government if there is a risk of persecution in any of its parts or territories. That is why the migrant groups from Bangladesh and Egypt – two countries with numerous well-documented human rights issues – were immediately returned to Italy.
This decision put the Italian designation of 19 safe third countries under additional scrutiny, and the ECJ has now been asked to review whether the list prepared by Meloni’s government is compliant with EU law. The ECJ is set to hear the case on February 25.
Regardless of whether that decision goes the prime minister’s way or not, sources have told BIRN of their confidence that, in time, the centres will start to function as planned. The source close to the Italian embassy in Tirana assures that a legal solution will be found, even if only because of the fact that any other outcome would be embarrassing for both Italy and Albania.
Meloni has already used the decision of the court in Rome to further the idea that the Italian judiciary is acting against the people’s interests and that it is obstructing the current government’s plans in the name of a political vendetta. She also stated that, “the centres for migrants in Albania will work, even if I have to spend every night there from now until the end of the term of the Italian government.”
Yet even if Meloni gets her way and the centres do get up and running, questions over the value and logic of them remain. Offshoring definitely is a new solution, as Meloni claims, but it will also be a costly one, with many legislative question marks continuing to hang over it.
