Albania Decree to Make Immigration Centers Operative Approved in the Senate. The Text Becomes Law

The Albania decree becomes law, amid controversy, in the Senate , with the measure filed and dismissed in a few hours this morning by the Constitutional Affairs Committee without there having been an examination of the text and without a mandate to the rapporteur. And with another vote of confidence (after the one approved by the Chamber last week). The votes in favor were 90, those against 56, one abstention.

The measure modifies the protocol, signed between Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her counterpart Edi Rama in November 2023, on the Schengjin and Gjader centers opened last October in Albania which, up to now, have been used very little, with huge costs, a "shuttle" in the Adriatic waters that has attracted criticism of the executive by the opposition and an unprecedented clash with the magistrates on the definition of "safe countries". The coming and going in recent months, of military ships with migrants on board, following the failure of the judges to validate the detentions, has convinced the government to broaden the scope of the agreement between Meloni and Rama.

Moreover, it was the prime minister, in December 2024, who stated at the Brothers of Italy event from the stage of Atreju: "the centers will work, they will work. If I had to spend every night there from now until the end of the Italian government, they will work" and the modification of the protocol aims to secure the transfers.

The decree in fact extends the group of those who can be taken to Albania to foreigners, already in Italy, affected by detention measures (not only non-EU asylum seekers intercepted in international waters). And the transfer will be possible without the detention being lifted and without requiring a new validation. Not only that, with some changes introduced in the Chamber, it is foreseen that if the migrant, transferred to the centers in Albania, were to apply for protection, thus changing his legal status, he will not be taken back to Italy if there are "founded reasons to believe that the application for international protection was presented for the sole purpose of delaying or preventing the execution of the rejection or expulsion".

In the event of failure to validate the detention, in the presence of an asylum application suspected of having been presented for delaying purposes, the possibility of issuing a new detention order for another of the reasons provided for by law is envisaged and when the order is adopted immediately or, in any case, no later than 48 hours after the communication of the failure to validate, the asylum seeker remains in the centre until the decision on validation. The application of the accelerated procedure for examining asylum applications at the border is also extended. At the moment in Albania there are about 40 migrants and there have been less than twenty repatriations, an operation that necessarily takes place with the return to Italy from where flights depart for the countries of origin that have made agreements with Italy in this sense.