Pillar of Rome’s new migration policy, the great Albanian project of the President of the Italian Council, Giorgia Meloni, is taking shape with the complicity of her counterpart and « ami » from Tirana, Edi Rama. Monday October 14, almost a year after the signing between the far-right leader and the social democrat of a memorandum of understanding providing for the construction of detention centers under Italian law in Albanian territory, a first group of migrants rescued at sea by the authorities of Rome was heading towards the Balkan country aboard the Libraan Italian navy ship.
After their disembarkation, scheduled for Wednesday, the castaways are expected to be detained behind the fences of these rights-of-way in containers barely out of the ground, where their asylum request will have to be processed according to the procedures in force in Italy. For Mme Meloni, this device has a dissuasive purpose. But the legal and especially logistical viability of what is supposed to constitute one of the great achievements of his mandate continues to raise questions.
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Responding to a simple aspiration, the implementation of the agreement is complex. In fact, it only concerns migrants rescued in international waters by Italian ships and deemed not vulnerable. Women, minors, people suffering from mental disorders, victims of torture, sexual violence and human trafficking are supposed to be preserved to be sent to Italy.
Videoconferencing system
Once they have landed, the first migrants detained there must be identified in a structure at the port of Shengjin then transferred to the administrative detention center located on a former military base in Gjader, where they can be detained until 880 people. The asylum procedure will be made possible by a videoconferencing system linking the Albanian centers to the court in Rome, where judges will be able to supervise the hearings. Asylum seekers’ communications with their lawyers will operate in the same way, with decisions then being made within twenty-eight days.
In an international context marked by the electoral successes of the far right, by widespread tension on the migration issue and by a questioning of the right to asylum as it is currently framed, Ms.me Meloni presents a certain attraction for its European partners. Berlin has already expressed its interest in the “Albanian model”. In London, the Labor government looks favorably on a project deemed to be better legally framed and less expensive than the ruinous agreement with Rwanda which has already cost the United Kingdom 280 million euros before being abandoned without ever having started. On the French side, we are waiting to judge on the evidence. With curiosity.
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