On 28 March, the Italian Council of Ministers approved a decree law to change the use of at least one of the two migrant centres built in Albania in 2024. The two centres have so far caused serious problems and much embarrassment for the Italian government, because although three attempts have been made to send migrants to Albania, in all three cases the Italian authorities have had to return them to Italy because the competent judges have always refused to validate their detention in Albania, considering it contrary to the relevant European legislation and jurisprudence.

The agreement between Rome and Tirana stipulates that only adult male migrants without physical or mental health problems, who have been rescued exclusively by Italian naval vessels in international waters and who come from so-called safe countries can be sent to Albania so that the accelerated procedure for assessing asylum applications can be applied to them: i.e. countries where fundamental rights are not denied or where there is no reason to believe that the safety of people returning there is at risk.

The problem of “safe country” notion

It is precisely the notion of ’safe country‘ that has led to a clash between politics and the judiciary, because among the countries that the Italian government considers to be safe, there are some that cannot be considered as such under European law: the Italian judges have so far followed the interpretation of the notion of ’safe country‘ given by the European Court of Justice, most recently in a ruling of 4 October 2024, which, as mentioned above, required some migrants from Egypt and Bangladesh to be returned from Albania to Italy. The correct interpretation of the concept of ’safe country‘ is currently the subject of appeals to the Court of Justice by various Italian and non-Italian judges, and the ruling that should finally clarify the issue is expected between May and June 2025. In the meantime, the two Albanian centres remain unused, despite their official opening in October 2024.

An attempt to change the rules

The decree-law of 28 March tries to change things, establishing that one of the two Albanian centres, the one in Gjader, can now be used as a detention centre for repatriation: these are the so-called CPRs, the places where the migrants who have already received a deportation decree and are waiting to be repatriated after their asylum application has been refused are held in Italy. There are already ten of them in Italy, but they have several problems due to documented human rights violations and because they are ineffective in repatriation procedures

The Albanian centres were designed to divert some of the migrants bound for Italy outside the national borders: in this way, according to the Italian government, the burden of managing asylum applications would be reduced to the centres on Italian territory alone, and a deterrent effect would be created towards asylum seekers from countries considered safe. The latter would have thought twice before travelling to Italy, knowing that they would no longer be guaranteed access to Italian territory and that their application and possible subsequent deportation would be managed through a procedure completely outsourced to the two centres in Albania, albeit under the full jurisdiction of the Italian authorities.

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said that the Gjader centre currently has 48 places in the CPR section, which should rise to 140 when it is fully operational. However, this means that a large part of the Gjader centre will remain unused. Originally, the facility was supposed to be divided into three parts: a detention centre with 880 places, a CPR with 144 places and a prison with 20 places.

On the other hand, it is unclear what will happen to the other centre, the one in Shengjin, which is much smaller than the one in Gjader and was intended to serve as a hotspot for the initial identification of asylum seekers (and therefore cannot be used for administrative detention, like a CPR). It will remain unused for the time being.

As we have seen, the aim of the agreement was to detain asylum-seekers in the two Albanian centres without ever allowing them to pass through Italy: the government in Rome had assured that it would be able to make the centres operational anyway, thanks to the new European rules on immigration, which are not due to come into force until mid-2026. However, with the Decree-Law of 28 March, the government now wants to send migrants already in Italy to the CPR part of Gjader, rather than those intercepted in the Mediterranean, as originally envisaged in the agreement with Tirana. In essence, the Gjader centre will function like all other Italian CPRs, with the only difference that it will be located in Albania.

Improving the government’s public image

The unusability of the two centres has done great damage to the reputation of the Italian government and Prime Minister Meloni, who had promised in her election campaign to speed up and increase repatriation procedures for migrants not entitled to asylum. The Italy-Albania agreement was supposed to be the ’stroke of genius‘ to succeed where previous governments had failed, but for the time being the initiative has turned out to be a media and political boomerang, although the government blames this on Italian judges for misinterpreting European law.

In any case, the fact that the government is trying to change the function of at least one of the two Albanian centres suggests that Rome may be beginning to think that the chances of filling the centres without changing the terms of the agreement with Tirana are very slim at the moment. Indirectly, the government is thus admitting that the strategy of outsourcing asylum procedures is in fact unfeasible. Given that the centres are expected to cost Italy at least 160 million euros a year for five years, to which must be added the cost of transforming the Gjader centre into a CPR, the whole operation risks becoming a defeat not only politically but also economically.

Multiple problems, no real solution in sight

Designed to improve the government’s image in the eyes of public opinion by demonstrating that „somehow“ the Albanian centres will continue to be used, the Decree-Law of 28 March actually adds new problems to an already very complex situation. First of all, the transfer of migrants who have already arrived in Italy to the Albanian centres removes the deterrent effect that the Italian government believes the „Albanian model“ should have produced: the migrants will all arrive in Italy anyway, and their transfer to the CPR in Gjader will only represent an additional cost for the Italian budget compared to what it would cost to transfer the same migrants to one of the ten CPRs already existing in Italy. Secondly, the whole operation should allow for the transfer of a maximum of 140 asylum-seekers who would be detained in Albania for up to 18 months awaiting repatriation: it is easy to imagine that the Gjader CPR would be immediately full, without providing any real relief to the Italian system for managing irregular migrants.

Thirdly, and this is the biggest problem, the Decree-Law only modifies the Italian law ratifying the Italy-Albania Protocol, which is an international agreement and cannot be modified as regards the use of the centres for migrants without the consent of the counterpart, i.e. the Albanian government. According to the rules of international law, a substantial change to an international agreement requires a renegotiation of the agreement between the parties: a unilateral change to the national law of only one party cannot be binding on all parties to the agreement. An additional problem for the Meloni government is that Albania is currently in the midst of an electoral campaign ahead of the parliamentary elections on 11 May 2025, and the outgoing Prime Minister Edi Rama is certainly not in a position to renegotiate an international commitment such as that contained in the Italy-Albania Agreement. In addition, opposition leader Sali Berisha has spoken out against the agreement and said that if he becomes prime minister it will not be renewed when it expires in 2029: he is very unlikely to accept its renegotiation if his party wins the elections.

All in all, then, the Italian government’s initiative appears to be an attempt at ‚media maquillage‘, which raises many more problems than it claims to solve, and which should provoke reflection, even at European level, among those who have so far considered the ‚Albanian model‘ as a strategy to be adopted and replicated with other non-European states: could it not be that if no one has so far thought of it, trivially, it is perhaps because it cannot be done?

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