SHENGJIN, Albania (AP) — The Italian government on Friday formally opened two centers in Albania where it plans to process male migrants intercepted in international waters.
The opening was delayed for months because the crumbling ground in one center needed to be repaired.
Italy’s ambassador to Albania, Fabrizio Bucci, said the two centers were ready to process migrants, but could not say when the first would arrive.
“As of today, the two centers are ready and operational,” Bucci told journalists at the port of Shengjin on Albania’s Adriatic coast, where the migrants will land.
Signed under a five-year agreement Last November, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Albanian counterpart, Edi Rama, agreed to host up to 3,000 migrants a month by the Italian coast guard in international waters in Albania. They will first be screened on board the rescue ships before being sent to Albania for further screening.
The two centers will cost Italy €670 million over five years. The facilities will be managed by Italy and fall under Italian jurisdiction, while Albanian guards will provide external security.
An area in Shengjin, 66 kilometers northwest of the capital Tirana, will be used to screen new arrivals. Housing units, a small hospital, a detention center and offices on the harbor are surrounded by a five-meter-high metal fence topped with barbed wire.
The other center, about 22 kilometers east, near a former military airport in Gjader, will house migrants while their asylum applications are processed on a site of about 20 hectares.
The centers will only house adult men, while vulnerable people such as women, children, the elderly and those who are ill or victims of torture in Italy will be housed. Families will also not be separated.
While in Albania, the migrants will retain their right under international and European Union law to seek asylum in Italy and have their applications processed there.
Processing of each claim is expected to take approximately one month. Italy has agreed to welcome those granted asylum. Those whose applications are rejected risk direct deportation from Albania.
The controversial agreement to outsource the housing of asylum seekers to a non-EU member state has been praised by some countries which, like Italy, are faced with a heavy refugee burden.
The agreement was endorsed by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen as an example of “out-of-box thinking” in tackling the issue of migration to the European Union, but has been human rights groups as setting a dangerous precedent.
Rama has made that clear no other country could have such centers in Albania. For Italy, they are considered an expression of gratitude for the tens of thousands of Albanians the country welcomed with the fall of the communist regime in 1991.
Meloni and its right-wing allies have long demanded that European countries share more of the EU migration burden. She has presented the Albania Treaty as an innovative solution to a problem that has been bothering the EU for years.
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