Why expulsions from Albania violate EU law

I learned with extreme concern that on May 9, several Egyptian nationals, held in the CPR of Gjadër in Albania, were reportedly repatriated directly from Tirana to Cairo, without ever passing through Italy. An operation that, if confirmed, would represent not only a serious precedent, but a real violation of the European Directive on repatriation , procedural guarantees, the right to an effective remedy and the principle of non-refoulement.

I immediately submitted a parliamentary question to ask the Minister of the Interior on what legal basis this forced repatriation was ordered, carried out by a non-EU state like Albania, with methods that seem more similar to an arbitrary delivery than to an operation conducted in compliance with the law. The question is simple: under what jurisdiction were those people when they were accompanied to the airport to be forcibly repatriated? It is not the first time that we have denounced the serious criticalities of the Italy-Albania agreement , but this time we are faced with a leap in level that confirms how the entire propaganda operation of the Meloni Government continually moves in a legal and political gray area, where the law seems suspended and democratic control is nullified.

And in the meantime, hundreds of millions of euros of public money continue to pour in to finance a failed, ineffective and potentially illegitimate operation from several points of view. We need transparency, we need political responsibility and we need to stop these excesses immediately. Parliament and public opinion cannot be kept in the dark by forced repatriations carried out quietly. The Government must respond, and it must do so now.