ALBANIA: Italian-Run Reception Centres in Albania ‘Ready to Accommodate Migrants’

Italian authorities announced on Friday that two reception centres in Albania are now ready to accommodate intercepted migrants sent from Italy.

The centres are part of a much-criticised deal between Prime Ministers Edi Rama and Giorgia Meloni that was signed in November last year, intended to help discourage irregular migration into the EU.

“We are here to confirm that the migrant centres in Shengjin and Gjader are ready to accommodate the first contingent [of migrants],” Fabrizio Bucci, the Italian ambassador to Tirana, told journalists on Friday.

“They have been supplied with the necessary logistics and personnel to be functional,” he added.

Italy’s plan to build migrant centres in Albania has been criticised in both countries, where activists and human rights lawyers have questioned Albania’s capacities to handle the arrangements.

The deal received the green light from Albania’s Constitutional Court in January.

According to the agreement, Italy is covering all the construction and equipment costs.

The Shengjin centre, near the Albanian coast, is divided into several sections, with administration located at the entrance, while the area within the centre that accommodates the migrants is monitored by the Italian police and is fenced off. Currently it has space for around 400 migrants.

There is also a detention area and trial rooms at the migrant centre, guarded by Italian police

Regarding security in both centres, the Italian colonel for Protection and Security in the Gjadri camp said that if there is any incident or conflict, responsibility rests with the Italian authorities, excluding the intervention of the Albanian law enforcement authorities.

“If any incident between migrants occurs we need to react for their protection. We can’t stay and watch,” Italian General Massimmo Schannichio, in charge of the centre’s security, said.

“We will act the same way as we do in Italy, including the identification of such crimes, to address them to the Italian authorities,” he added.

The procedure for asylum requests by migrants who will be accommodated will last 28 days.

Those whose asylum requests are rejected will be transferred from Shengjin to the centre at the Gjader airbase in northwestern Albania.

The arrangement is supposed to operate on the same lines as Italy’s repatriation ‘hotspots’, where migrants and refugees are detained pending repatriation, but which the European Court of Human Rights criticised in March.

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