First migrants at Albanian centres next week -Piantedosi

There will be no barbed wire says interior minister

By: ansa.it

Oct 12 2024
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First migrants at Albanian cen

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said Saturday that the first migrants will arrive next week at two migrant centres Italy has set up on Albanian territory.
    "We expect to start next week," Piantedosi said at an event organized by daily newspaper the Il Foglio.
    "We realistically expect the first people will be taken to the centres in Albania next week.
    "There will be no ribbon cutting," he added, saying the centres "are similar to those in Italy" with "light detention" regimes.
    "There is no barbed wire, there is health care," he said.
    "Everyone can apply for international protection (at them) and obtain it within days".
    The centres, the result of an agreement between Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, were initially supposed to have opened in May but there have been construction and procedural delays.
    The scheme has been criticised by rights groups as externalising migration processing and creating a new Guantanamo but several other European countries have expressed interest in emulating it.
    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer voiced special interest in the scheme, and other moves that have brought migration to Italy down this year, on a visit to Rome last month.
    Meloni has stressed that, under the bilateral protocol setting up the centres, women, children and the 'fragile' would not be taken to Albania after being rescued by Italian vessels.