Italy will build two detention centers in Albania to house migrants trying to reach its shores, Prime Minister Georgia Meloni said Monday, in an attempt to control migration figures that have almost doubled in the year since she took office. <\/p>\n
Meloni said the facilities are due to open next spring and will initially take in 3,000 people. Once the centers are \u201cfully up and running,\u201d Meloni said her government hoped they could process up to 36,000 people a year. <\/p>\n
Meloni\u2019s far-right Brothers of Italy party is facing growing domestic pressure as it has failed to deliver on an electoral promise to limit illegal migration. More than 145,000 people have reached Italy\u2019s shores since January, compared with 88,000 people last year. <\/p>\n
Speaking in Rome alongside her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama, Meloni hailed the deal as a \u201cEuropean agreement\u201d and an \u201cinnovative solution\u201d aimed at curbing the rise in crossings over the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa. <\/p>\n
\u201cMass irregular immigration is a phenomenon that\u2026 member states of the European Union cannot deal with alone,\u201d Meloni said at a joint news conference with Rama, adding \u201ccooperation between EU member states and what are, for now, non-EU countries, can play a decisive role.\u201d <\/p>\n
Albania was granted European Union candidate status nearly a decade ago but has not yet joined the bloc. The deal marks the first time an EU country has outsourced its asylum procedures to a country attempting to join its ranks. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf Italy calls Albania, it is there,\u201d Rama said. \u201cWe are a European state, but we are missing the \u2018U\u2019 in front but this, but that does not prevent us to be and see the world as Europeans,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The centers will be built in the Albanian ports of Shengjin and Gjader and are \u201cin full compliance with the European Union and international law,\u201d Meloni said. <\/p>\n
One center will be used to process migrants rescued by boats at sea; the second will be used to house migrants who qualify to apply for asylum in the EU. It is unclear what happens to those who do not qualify, but the Meloni government has focused on using the threat of immediate deportation as means to deter migrants from arriving on Italy\u2019s shores. <\/p>\n
Immediate deportation is not allowed inside the EU due to human rights statutes that allow all arrivals to apply for asylum. Because Albania is not an EU member, those rules will not apply. <\/p>\n
The plan would allow Italy to skirt the Dublin agreement, which states that the first country in which migrants arrive must care for them and process their cases. <\/p>\n
Italy will provide the manpower to process applications, but Albania will provide police for security and surveillance, Meloni said, adding that minors, pregnant women and other vulnerable groups would not be sent to Albania. Few other details about the deal, including its cost, have been revealed. <\/p>\n
The European Commission issued a terse response Tuesday afternoon. \u201cWe\u2019re in contact with the Italian authorities because we need to see the details. We\u2019re asking to receive detailed information on this type of arrangement,\u201d a spokesperson said. <\/p>\n
The deal echoes the United Kingdom\u2019s controversial agreement to send thousands of asylum seekers to Rwanda, which has been mired in legal challenges since its inception. <\/p>\n
Human rights groups and opposition politicians decried the announcement. The secretary of the left-wing More Europe party Riccardo Magi wrote on X that the deal would create an \u201cItalian Guantanamo.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Italian government\u2019s plan to build reception centers for refugees and asylum seekers in Albania is a testament to its disproportionate focus on preventing people from arriving in the EU, rather than creating safe and legal avenues for those seeking refuge,\u201d said Susanna Zanfrini, IRC Italy country director. <\/p>\n
\u201cBig questions loom over the application of Italian jurisdiction in Albania, as it remains unclear how people on the move could access asylum and exercise their basic rights in a non-EU territory,\u201d she added. <\/p>\n
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also reacted to the announcement by comparing the\u00a0memorandum\u00a0to other investments made in transit countries to prevent people from departing to seek safety from war, famine and other strife. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe pact signed between Italy and\u00a0Albania\u00a0goes one step further than the outsourcing agreements that the Italian government or European institutions have signed in recent years with Turkey, Libya and Tunisia,\u201d MSF said in a statement. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe lack of access to Italian soil, the extraterritorial management of asylum applications, the application of accelerated border procedures and the detention of people in a third country represent a new attack on the right to asylum, as it is understood today,\u201d the MSF statement added. <\/p>\n
MSF, which operates a rescue boat in the search and rescue area between Libya, Malta and Italy, also expressed concern that sending ships with migrants to distant ports puts those people in jeopardy. <\/p>\n\n
Italy will build two detention centers in Albania to house migrants trying to reach its shores, Prime Minister Georgia Meloni said Monday, in an attempt to control migration figures that have almost doubled in the year since she took office. Meloni said the facilities are due to open next spring and will initially take in <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11288,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}