Italy will open a reception center in Albania where requests for asylum will be decided according to Italian laws, reports Deutsche says.
The question is whether it is just a precedent or an announcement of similar agreements with some other countries?
In 2018, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said that his country would never accept the establishment of refugee camps for the European Union on its territory.
What Rama "never" wanted to implement then, should now be implemented - at a former military location near the town of Djader in northwestern Albania, a few kilometers from the Adriatic coast.
According to the Declaration of Intentions signed in Rome on November 6, 2023, by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and his Italian counterpart, Djordja Meloni, a reception center for asylum seekers in Europe should be built there. Albania intends to hand over the site to the Italian authorities without compensation.
Not the first attempt.
All this is currently causing media attention, but also unrest in European politics. Because Meloni and Rama decided it independently.
"If the project is implemented, it would be the first time that such an idea has really been put into practice," Ruud Kopmans, a migration expert at Berlin's Humboldt University, told Deutsche Welle.
In the past, there were attempts to establish reception centers for asylum seekers outside the EU - but without success. In April of this year, a similar agreement between the EU and Tunisia failed, and in June a British court stopped the refugee agreement between that country and Rwanda, because the small central African country was not a "safe third country".
That argument does not apply to the Meloni-Rama agreement. The Balkan country, separated from Italy only by the Adriatic Sea, has long had the status of a "safe third country" in the EU.
Rescued in Albania
According to the agreement, those migrants rescued or picked up on the high seas by the Italian coast guard should be brought to Albania - but not children, women and families.
Italy's right-wing populist prime minister hopes to keep up to 36.000 refugees a year away from her country. According to Eurostat data, 145.000 migrants arrived in Italy this year alone.
The agreement, the text of which has since been published, stipulates that the procedures for granting asylum will be carried out by the Italian authorities in accordance with Italian law.
Anyone who has been granted the right to protection should be brought to Italy. Those who are rejected should be deported immediately.
The danger of secondary migration
Pelumb Nako, who was director of border management and migration at the state police in the previous term of Rama's government, sees another problem.
"Refugees will try to illegally cross the border of Montenegro and then Croatia," he says. "And then the question is: if they request asylum in Croatia and are rejected, where will they be deported?" To Albania or to Italy?" That has not been clarified yet," says Nako.
Caution in the EU
The European Union reacted cautiously to the agreement.
The European Commission in Brussels announced that it wants to get acquainted with additional details. EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ilva Johansson stressed that the agreement must be fully in line with the United Nations Refugee Charter.
The German government has not yet commented on the Meloni-Rahm deal. But Germany also wants to examine the possibility of asylum applications being submitted outside the EU, a government spokeswoman in Berlin told Deutsche Welle on Wednesday.
However, as she added, "it is difficult to find countries that are ready to establish reception centers."
Genc Poljo, former deputy prime minister of Albania and member of the opposition Democratic Party, does not believe in such a narrative.
He believes that Rama wants to ingratiate himself with EU leaders and divert attention from his own corruption scandals and violations of democracy, Poljo told Deutsche Welle.
In the European Commission's progress report published on November 8, Albania was given a poor rating for the fight against corruption.
BG/Deutsch vele
Read daily news, analysis, commentary and interviews at www.vreme.com
