The centers for migrants in Albania cannot repatriate migrants to unsafe countries: the EU is wrong to the Meloni government

The centers for migrants in Albania “will work”, the president Giorgia Meloni had shouted peremptory just a few months ago. They will work, “I had to spend every night from here to the end of the Italian government.” Maybe the nights will not be all, but certainly some of the Prime Minister will still have to pass to bring the structures designed at the beginning as centers for migrants in Albania and then converted to stay centers for repatriations. Because, after a saga already not very happy, the Court of Justice of the European Union has put the sticks in the wheels of this project, saying substantially that it is not so easy to decide that a country is safe enough to postpone us whoever fled.

Inaugurated in October 2024 as the result of an agreement between the Italian and Albanian government, the two centers for migrants in Albania of Shengjin and Gjader They immediately showed some limitations, as well as some criticism. If the latter concerned, for example, the expenditure incurred – 65 million euros for the construction, and 120 million a year for management – the limits and doubts concerned more than anything else the jurisdiction of these structures. According to the agreements, the two centers (one a hotspot to identify people intercepted in the meditheranneum, the second instead designed as a first reception center for asylum seekers by a thousand seats) would have been under full control of the Italian authorities, with Albania who provided only (free of charge and for five years) the space to host them.

But the main knot that has never allowed the centers for migrants in Albania so wanted by the Meloni government to work properly is what concerns The definition of “safe countries”. According to the memorandum of understanding between Rome and Tirana, only non -fragile adult men from Albania can be held in Albania from countries considered safe. All the others must remain within Italian borders. But what are the countries considered safe? According to Italy, the list is long enough, further modified on 24 October last with a new decree-law which, at the time explained the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio, served precisely to guarantee the functioning of the centers for migrants in Albania.

In fact, Italy had already found itself in October to reject some decrees of detention of migrants in the centers in Albania, because they are from countries considered by our country safe but with some reserve, such as Egypt and Bangladesh. In these places, he said the list of Italian safe countries, security was guaranteed, but not in some areas and not for some categories of people (for example, the people of the LGBT community). With the new decree-law of October, instead Italy substantially argued that A country is to be identified safe if it is throughout the territory, even if it is not for some categories of people. In this way, basically, countries on which there have been problems for the repatriations of migrants, such as Egypt and Bangladesh, also included the list.

Today, however, The Court of Justice of the European Union is wrong to the Meloni government and Minister Nordio, By clearly explaining that “a Member State cannot include in the list of safe countries of origin” a country that “does not offer sufficient protection to all its population”. In short, migrants from countries that do not guarantee security to all categories of people have the right to ask for asylum. “Surprises the decision of the EU Court of Justice regarding the sure countries of origin of illegal migrants. Once again the jurisdiction, this time European, claims spaces that do not compete themin the face of responsibilities that are political “, writes in a well -known Palazzo Chigi, aware that this sentence will make even more difficult – at least as it has been imagined – the functioning of the migrants centers in Albania.