The Meloni government considers them a model for managing the immigration dossier but so far the two centers in Albania have never taken off. More than two years have passed since the signing of the protocol with Edi Rama and the structures have hosted fewer migrants compared to initial expectations and have used up considerable state resources.
In recent hours, the European Council approved an agreement that defines the criteria for the so-called “safe countries” for repatriation: a text that will have to be negotiated with the European Parliament for final approval. And within the government there are those who see in the new decisions taken at community level a way to relaunch the Shëngjin and Gjader centers and guarantee their functioning.
The reference to “return hubs”
The new regulation which reviews the concept of a safe third country contains a part that has made the centre-right rejoice: that on the so-called “return hubs”. This concerns the possibility for member states to establish centers in third countries, such as Albania for example. Within the government, the reference contained in the agreement is considered sufficient to restart the two centers after months of stop and go also due to some sentences of the judiciary which called into question the key points of the protocol signed by Giorgia Meloni and Edi Rama.
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“The centers of Albania strongly propose to be active in all the functions for which they were designed, therefore the places of detention for the exercise of accelerated border procedures, but above all to apply to be the first example of those return hubs which are mentioned precisely by one of these approved regulations”, explained the Minister of the Interior Piantedosi. According to the Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio, the agreement reached at European level will bring certainty on the functioning of the centers in Albania: “We are enormously satisfied and we are certain that within a very short time this confusion that had existed up until now in the jurisprudence and in the management of these migratory flows will be definitively ascertained precisely in the regulatory sphere and therefore there will no longer be room for jurisprudential hesitations”.
The operations of the centers in Albania
But what will happen to the Shëngjin and Gjader structures in the coming months? Meanwhile, the regulation that revises the concept of a safe third country – and which more closely concerns the “Albania model” – will still have to be approved by the European Parliament. It should also be noted that the agreement reached in the European Council did not pass unanimously: Spain, Greece, France and Portugal voted against the text.
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The “return hubs” envisaged by the new rules concern structures intended for irregular migrants – considered as such already on the soil of the Old Continent – and not people waiting for an accelerated border procedure as the Meloni government would like. The two structures on which the executive is focusing will therefore have to respect very specific limits in order to function and it is therefore not certain that there will be the immediate restart desired by several members of the government. Then there are some unresolved issues that could end up at the center of legal disputes. One of these is the obligation for each country that adheres to the Geneva Convention to examine asylum requests. An aspect that could clash with the provision of “offloading” the responsibility for the procedures onto third countries of transit, even when deemed safe by community rules.
