EU shows the way, and Italian centres in Albania become the first return hubs

Brussels – With the returns regulation proposal, the European Commission has pointed a way out of the dead end the Italian government got into with the failed protocol on centres for migrant persons in Albania. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi announced it: now Italy will try to convert these centres, designed to process asylum claims of migrants intercepted in international waters, into the first European example of return hubs, the controversial centres for returns outside EU territory. The broad camp formed by the Democratic Party, 5 Star Movement and Green Left Alliance is sounding the alarm from the European Parliament in Brussels, exposing an “unacceptable and shameful” attempt to save face.

The report compiled by the Asylum and Immigration Platform, the coalition of civil society organizations that has constantly been monitoring Meloni’s experiment in Albania, from sea screenings to very short stays in the Shengjin and Gjader centres, was presented today (March 25) to the EU Parliament. A report that highlights the “numerous and systematic” violations of the model: an “absolutely inadequate” vulnerability assessment of migrant persons, a “generalised” application of expedited border procedures, prolonged detention right from the “screening” at sea, and the inability of persons to exercise their right to defence under appropriate conditions.

The Platform’s coordinator and ARCI’s national immigration manager, Filippo Miraglia, assumes that “the fact that the minister of the Interior wants to convert the centres into CPRs” automatically decrees “the failure of that protocol.” But it has helped further stiffen the securitarian narrative in Europe and widen the range of possible solutions to counter the arrival of migrants. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, had endorsed the project. But faced with the stops imposed by Italian magistrates, “at some point in Europe they stopped mentioning the Albania model because it became clear to everyone how much of a failure this is from every point of view,” attacked Dem MEP Cecilia Strada.

In the meantime, however, Brussels has opened up the possibility of transferring migrants whose asylum claims are rejected to facilities in third countries, pending actual return to their countries of origin. In the proposal for a return regulation presented on March 11, the European Commission explicitly talks about return hubs, then leaves the operation of such centres to be defined by bilateral agreements between member countries and the third countries in question. The proposal is only in its initial stages. It has now been passed to the co-legislators, the EU Council, and the European Parliament, per the EU legislative process.

But the Asylum and Immigration Platform already has clear ideas: the possible transformation of the Albanian centres into return hubs “is not an acceptable option” because it would mean introducing “blatant new violations of fundamental rights, further strengthening a system of arbitrary and unjustified detention.” For those who have carried out independent monitoring at the centres, “dismantling the facilities is the only possible prospect.”

In addition to Strada, Leoluca Orlando, MEP for AVS, and Pasquale Tridico, head of the 5 Star Movement’s delegation to the European Parliament, were present at the report presentation. The latter called the Italy-Albania protocol a “legal disgrace” and an “economic disaster,” in which Giorgia Meloni has invested some €650 million of public resources. Tridico stressed the “worrying” position of the European Commission, which “has been winking at Meloni” throughout the whole affair. The former mayor of Palermo recalled that we are facing “a failure on the side of rights guarantees.” According to Orlando, the European Commission’s proposal on return hubs “is deliberately ambiguous, does not define the contours” and “thus ends up delegating to sovereignists the choice of the details” of such centres.