The government is working on
solutions to allow Italian-run migrant centres in Albania to
function, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told a question
time session at the Lower House on Wednesday.
"The government is at work to implement solutions that are able
to overcome the obstacles met so far, enabling the facilities in
Albania that are part of a multipurpose system to fully function
and developing their significant potential", Piantedosi said.
"In fact, in addition to a hotspot and a detention centre for
accelerated border procedures, a permanence and repatriation
centre is already present in Albania today, whose use will not
lead to any addition cost", he noted.
The minister added that the Albanian project will "move forward
with the conviction that the fight against the criminal business
connected to irregular immigration, which also takes advantage
of the instrumental use of asylum requests, is a priority to
govern the phenomenon of migration respecting international and
European obligations".
The implementation of a protocol between Rome and Tirana for the
fast-track processing of asylum seekers at the facilities has so
far been stymied by Italy's courts.
The two centres of Shengjin and Gjader are currently empty after
Italian judges failed to validate the detention of the first
three groups of migrants taken there in October, November and
January.
The detention of the migrants who were brought to Albania under
the innovative but controversial government scheme to deter
departures has been quashed pending a European Court of Justice
ruling, expected later this month.
The detentions were nixed under a previous ECJ ruling, which did
not concern Italy, that the countries of provenance of the
asylum seekers taken to Albania - Egypt and Bangladesh - are not
wholly safe for repatriation on all their territories.
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