When Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni unveiled her flagship plan to intercept, detain and process asylum-seekers in Albania, it was presented as a grand answer to Europe’s migration crisis.
But one year and €67.5 million later, the scheme is stuck in judicial limbo with no possibility for processing asylum-seekers, empty buildings that are already falling apart, and Italian personnel returning home.
“It looked like a ghost town,” Volt Europe co-President Francesca Romana D’Antuono, who visited the detention center in Gjadër in late November and took part in protests against the camp with local activists, told POLITICO.
“But then, when we entered, there was quite some police,” she added. “The point is that they do nothing all day, because there’s really nothing to do.”
According to D’Antuono, the senior police officer who accompanied them on the visit was displeased with their questioning of the staff. “I think they feel the absurdity of it all,” she said.
In October, the first 16 migrants — from Bangladesh and Egypt — arrived at the centers on an Italian warship. But within seven days all 16 were returned to Italy after immigration judges with the Rome tribunal nixed the scheme.
In late November, part of the Italian staff employed by Medihospes, the company managing operations at the centers, started returning to Italy.
Sources at the Italian embassy told POLITICO that despite staff reductions last month, all stations remain fully staffed — complete with round-the-clock police shifts — in case a surprise wave of refugees rolls in.
The project foresees a reception and sorting center in Shëngjin, where refugees captured by the Italian coast guard are first brought, their personal data is processed and they are offered initial health care services. The second part of the operation, a detention camp in Gjadër, is found inland around 8 kilometers from the regional city of Lezhë.
Shëngjin also served as a holding hub for Afghan refugees, particularly after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021. Despite its role as a temporary shelter, many refugees remained stuck there for nearly two years, awaiting a green light to move to the United States.
Sandër Marashi, head of the port at Shëngjin, said although no migrants have arrived for weeks, “the entire Italian staff is still at the port and at the center, and they manage everything here.”
Locals in the resort town of Shëngjin say the police spend their days lounging at the five-star Rafaelo Resort, basking in the sun and feasting on seafood while their unmistakable Carabinieri police cars sit parked out front.
Albanian media report that the staff at Gjadër — marooned in a mountainside village with just a few hundred locals for company — are isolated, bored and increasingly resentful of their Shëngjin colleagues, who they claim are soaking up the good life.
According to a story published in the internal magazine of the Italian penitentiary police, with no refugees in sight, the local prison officers at Gjadër have taken to rescuing and entertaining the village’s stray dogs instead.
‘A very expensive waiting room’
In April, the Italian government allocated €65 million for the construction of the two centers and another €2.5 million for the expenses of the Italian staff in 2024. Overall, the government estimated it would spend around €680 million over the next five years on maintaining and running the centers.
Meanwhile, the Italian government awaits a decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union, due this spring, on whether processing migrants in a third country is in line with EU law.
“It’s just a very expensive waiting room,” Volt European Parliament Member Anna Strolenberg, who visited the center in Gjadër with D’Antuono, told POLITICO.
Nevertheless, the Italian police employed in Albania to so little effect received a significant pay bump. While the average pay of an officer is less than €2,000 in Italy, those stationed in Albania can earn up to €6,000.
An Albanian television show secretly recorded a group of Italian police officers at the Shëngjin center admitting they spent most of their time in the hotel’s sauna, as they had nothing else to do.
Strolenberg argued that Meloni’s plan for processing centers in Albania was unrealistic from the outset. “Italy returns in total per year around 3,000 people or fewer, and in Albania they wanted to process around 3,000 people per month,” she said.
The facilities are already starting to fall apart, the MEP added.
“In the hospital, you could already see the water dripping from the walls,” she said. “And on the ground, the water wouldn’t go away.” She added it was difficult to imagine how the facility will fare when it becomes populated.
Failed model or political victory?
Since the inauguration of the two centers on Oct. 11 the project has received accolades from European leaders including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, both of whom expressed interest in replicating the approach elsewhere.
Von der Leyen praised the project and called it “an innovative solution,” asking other EU leaders to draw “lessons from the Italy-Albania protocol.”
Ahead of the last European summit in late October, Meloni led an informal meeting on “migration and innovative solutions” to recruit other EU leaders “interested in the migration issue.”
But Strolenberg says that by opening the centers Meloni has only given false hope to both European leaders and EU residents.
“Other politicians in Europe look at this deal and hope that it will succeed, that it can be a blueprint for other things,” she said, arguing that talks on migration will become “even more polarized” as a result.
Both Strolenberg and D’Antuono argued that even if the project fails, it won’t be a political defeat for Meloni.
“The narrative now in Italy is that if the project is not happening, it’s not because it’s not a good idea, but because there are communist judges that are ruining everything,” said D’Antuono, emphasizing the attacks from Meloni and her political allies directed at what they claim is a progressive-leaning judiciary.
“It will still look like at least she [Meloni] did the best she could,” Strolenberg said.
Meanwhile, attention is also now focusing on institutions like the Court of Justice of the EU, whose ruling allowed the Rome tribunal to demand that the handful of refugees sent to Albania since October be returned to Italy.
“The European Parliament is shifting to the right. European governments are shifting to the right. How long will the judiciary power hold? I don’t believe it will hold much longer, because laws also evolve with the political powers,” D’Antuono said.
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