In 2023, Italy signed a controversial $710 million deal to send asylum-seekers from countries that it deems “safe” to offshore reception centers in Albania, which is not in the European Union, where it would then process their asylum requests.
But the scheme to curb migrant arrivals quickly turned into a political and financial disaster—one that highlights how, despite European ambitions to tackle migration through offshore centers, these plans currently face too many obstacles to be feasible.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government presented the scheme, which entails intercepting male migrants at sea and transporting them directly to Albanian facilities, as a potential blueprint for the EU to process migrants outside of its borders. In October 2024, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen praised the Italy-Albania deal, saying that EU leaders had a lot to learn from it and encouraging them to consider offshore “return hubs” as valid options for managing asylum applications.
But later that month, after Italy transported a group of migrants from Bangladesh and Egypt to Albania, an Italian court ruled that all of them must be sent to Italy. The judges cited an earlier EU Court of Justice ruling, which found that a country of origin can only be designated “safe” if the entire country is safe for all minority groups. Meloni’s government has appealed the ruling and recently vowed to follow through on its plans. To date, Italy has not successfully processed a single asylum claim at the offshore centers.
The Italy-Albania deal was criticized by the opposition and much of the Italian electorate. According to a recent poll, 55 percent of voters do not support the program. One reason is financial: The first transport of asylum-seekers by sea to Albania on an Italian ship cost around $262,000—around $16,400 per migrant—and the scheme could cost more than $1 billion over five years.
There were also serious political, legal, and human rights concerns from the start. “There’s no way Meloni and her allies didn’t know since the beginning that there was a risk the deal might not work,” said Salvatore Fachile, a lawyer at the Italian Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration.
“It was already evident when we visited these centers that they were not respecting basic human rights, because these de facto offshore detention facilities for foreigners do not belong to a European democratic nation,” said Riccardo Magi, head of the Italian opposition party More Europe and who was part of a delegation of left-wing opposition leaders that went to the Albanian port city of Shengjin last summer.
“The ECJ ruling was just one of many legal issues,” Fachile said. “[Meloni] really tried to stretch her powers.” Indeed, shortly after Italy’s agreement with Albania was signed, several analysts and humanitarian organizations raised concerns that it was inhumane and did not accord with international law.
Amnesty International was among the first human rights organizations to condemn the scheme. “We had already criticized the protocol before its enforcement because it involves a forced detention for people who haven’t committed a crime,” said Elisa de Pieri, a researcher at Amnesty. “And having their asylum application examined for several weeks while they are deprived of basic freedoms goes against international laws.”
Lawmakers from Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party insist that, if anything, their scheme is more humane than past ones, such as the United Kingdom’s failed plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda. “In our plan, Italy would be directly responsible for the men’s fate, and the Albanian centers would work under Italian legislation, abiding to standard human rights norms. It is surely an improvable plan, but it assures a correct application of international norms,” Emanuele Loperfido, a Brothers of Italy parliamentarian, said.
“The high numbers of arrivals are a Europe-wide problem, and we are proposing a fair alternative to traffickers taking advantage of this business,” Loperfido said, adding that the plan “finally gives us a new instrument to manage migration as a systemic, organized matter rather than an emergency.”
De Pieri, however, believes “the far-right is using the migratory ‘crisis’ for campaigning goals, without actually respecting its obligations towards people on the move.” She pointed out that arrivals decreased by 60 percent in 2024 compared with the previous year. “Our request is that politicians in power focus on reinforcing a system already in place and create legal pathways for asylum rather than finding escapes to not have people reach EU soil,” she added.
The idea of offshore asylum facilities is not new. Australia and Israel have used detention centers in third countries over the past decade. And in recent years, several European governments have considered or attempted similar measures as they have sought to retain support by making good on campaign promises to curtail migration, including Denmark, Germany, and the United Kindom.
Fachile believes that it is unlikely that EU asylum outsourcing will work, as it violates too many international laws. It may even weaken support for Meloni’s government, especially at a time when it also faces pushback amid budget cuts in the education, health, and social security sectors.
So far, the Italy-Albania deal has exacerbated the already tense relations between Meloni’s administration, which campaigned heavily on migration management, and the judiciary, which the right accuses of being “politicized.” Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has threatened the judges on TV, saying, “They made a mistake, and they will have to pay for it.” Even Elon Musk, a longtime friend of Meloni’s, joined the debate, posting on X, “These judges must go.”
Last December, Meloni urged the ECJ to dismiss objections to the deal ahead of the new year. In the meantime, all Italian police forces have left the Albanian facilities, and the centers are temporarily being used to host hundreds of stray dogs. This development has reignited the debate on the scheme’s cost, with opponents criticizing Meloni for having created “the world’s most expensive kennel.”
Italy’s fractured political left stands to gain from the controversy. In recent years, the left has struggled to form a coalition that can oppose the ruling Brothers of Italy. But “this episode has contributed to making our opposition stronger, because we all agree that it is a bad idea,” said Matteo Orfini, a lawmaker and former head of Italy’s center-left Democratic Party.
Still, the newly united opposition knows that there is a long fight ahead. The EU debate around treating migration as an offshore problem will not be settled anytime soon. And now that Donald Trump has been reelected as U.S. president—and has given Musk a role in his administration—the U.S. approach to migration may further embolden anti-migrant politicians across the Atlantic.
Throughout his campaign, Trump pledged to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, and his “victory speech left little doubt about his intentions, doubling down on promises of a comprehensive immigration overhaul,” said Nenad Stekic, a research fellow at the Institute of International Politics and Economics. Like Meloni’s Albania project, there are serious questions about whether Trump will be able to follow through. But Stekic predicts that the president-elect’s rhetoric could have far-reaching consequences and inspire EU leaders to adopt similar plans, especially if Middle East turmoil leads to a spike in migrant arrivals.
“In the EU, centrist parties may feel pressured to adopt more conservative immigration stances to avoid losing ground, making consensus on reform more challenging as leaders balance humanitarian obligations against political pressures,” Stekic added.
Yet members of Italy’s left say they are ready to oppose far-right, anti-migrant policies, which took hold in the country as early as 2018, sooner than much of the rest of Europe. They hope they will be able to convince voters by the next election—set to take place by December 2027—that the right’s promises to curb migration are just a distraction from real issues facing Italians, including threats to human rights, such as press freedom and rights to protest, and high rates of poverty.
“We were the first to deal with the far right, and we hope to be the first to get rid of it, so the [United States] can see their future,” Orsini said.
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