TIRANA, Albania (AP) — A top European Union official declined Wednesday to weigh in on an agreement between Italy and Albania to process some migrants at centers set up in the small Western Balkan country. checked.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that “we have been very clear from the very beginning that we are monitoring the development regarding this agreement very closely.”
Under a five-year deal signed last November by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Albanian counterpart, Edi Rama, up to 3,000 migrants picked up by the Italian coast guard in international waters every month will be hosted in Albania. Their asylum applications are processed there.
Italy has agreed to welcome migrants who are granted asylum, while those whose applications are rejected will be deported directly from Albania.
The first twelve migrants received in Albanian centers last week were returned to Italy three days later, following a ruling by judges in Rome, who rejected their detention on the grounds that their countries of origin – Bangladesh and Egypt – were not safe enough to be released. sent back.
Italy’s far-right government on Monday approved a new decree aimed at overcoming legal hurdles that risked derailing a controversial migration deal with Albania.
Under the new decree – which takes effect immediately – the government has shortened the list of countries considered “safe” by law, meaning Rome can repatriate migrants who have not been granted asylum to those countries through an expedited procedure .
The court’s ruling was an early stumbling block for the five-year agreement between Italy and Albania.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has strongly pushed the deal, defending it as a new “model” to tackle illegal migration.
In a letter to EU leaders last December, a month after the deal was signed in Rome, von der Leyen praised “important initiatives” on limiting migration by some of the bloc’s 27 member states, including “the operational agreement between Italy and Albania’.
“This serves as an example of out-of-the-box thinking, based on a fair sharing of responsibilities with third countries in accordance with obligations under EU and international law,” she wrote.
Von der Leyen was in Tirana on Monday as part of a regional tour to reassure Western Balkan countries that expanding the trading bloc remains one of their priorities. She said only that the deal between Italy and Albania was “a bilateral agreement” on which the EU would not comment but would only monitor.
Human rights groups and NGOs active in the Mediterranean have labeled the agreement as a dangerous precedent that violates international law.
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