Italy formally opens centers in Albania to process male migrants intercepted in international waters

SHENGJIN, Albania (AP) — Italy’s government on Friday formally opened two centers in Albania where it plans to process male migrants who are intercepted in international waters.

The opening was delayed for several months because crumbling soil at one center needed to be repaired.

Italian Ambassador to Albania Fabrizio Bucci said the two centers are ready to process migrants, but could not say when the first ones 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.

Under a five-year deal signed last November by Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and her Albanian counterpart, Edi Rama, up to 3,000 migrants picked up by the Italian coast guard in international waters each month will be sheltered in Albania. They will be screened initially on board the ships that rescue them before being sent to Albania for further screening.

The two centers will cost Italy 670 million euros ($730 million) over five years. The facilities will be run by Italy and are under Italian jurisdiction, while Albanian guards will provide external security.

An area in Shengjin, 66 kilometers (40 miles) northwest of the capital, Tirana, will be used for screening newcomers. Housing units, a small hospital, a detention center and offices at the port are surrounded by a five-meter (16-foot) -high metal fence topped with barbed wire.

The other center, about 22 kilometers (14 miles) to its east near a former military airport in Gjader, will accommodate migrants during the processing of their asylum requests in a roughly 50-acre (20-hectare) site.

The centers will only house adult men, with vulnerable people such as women, children, the elderly and those who are ill or victims of torture will be accommodated in Italy. Families will also not be separated.

While in Albania, the migrants will retain their right under international and European Union law to apply for asylum in Italy and have their claims processed there.

Each claim is expected to take about a month to process. Italy has agreed to welcome those who are granted asylum. Those whose applications are rejected face deportation directly from Albania.

The controversial agreement to outsource the housing of asylum-seekers to a non-EU member country has been hailed by some countries that, like Italy, are suffering a heavy burden of refugees.

The agreement was endorsed by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as an example of “out-of-box thinking” in tackling the issue of migration into the European Union, but has been slammed by human rights groups as setting a dangerous precedent.

Rama has made it clear that no other country will be able to have such centers in Albania. For Italy, they are considered an expression of gratitude for the tens of thousands of Albanians it welcomed with the fall of the communist regime in 1991.

Meloni and her right-wing allies have long demanded that European countries share more of the migration burden. She has held up the Albania agreement as an innovative solution to a problem that has vexed the EU for years.

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Follow Llazar Semini at https://x.com/lsemini

Llazar Semini, The Associated Press