Italy has opened asylum-seeker centers in Albania.
The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni of the far-right party Fratelli d’Italia, announced on Tuesday, alongside Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, the establishment of a new asylum center for migrants crossing the Mediterranean and seeking to enter Europe.
The centers are expected to accommodate about 3,000 people, a move criticized by human rights organizations.
Meloni, who has expressed strong views on migrants and Italy’s declining birth rates, believes the new center will act as a deterrent to migrants and human traffickers.
Following the inauguration in Rome with the Albanian Prime Minister, she stated, “I consider this a truly European agreement, and I want to emphasize that it demonstrates the possibility of collaborating on managing migratory flows.
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They (the migrants) will stay in these centers for the necessary time to process asylum applications swiftly and, if needed, for repatriation.”
Furthermore, she elaborated on some details of the center and criteria for detention, stating that minors, pregnant women, and other vulnerable groups will not be sent to Albania.
Also, she specified that the centers are exclusively for individuals rescued at sea by the Italian navy and coast guard, not by charity groups.
Despite being located in Albania, the detention center is expected to be under the jurisdiction of Italy.
“This approach is extremely repressive towards foreign nationals who have a sort of lower-category status regarding personal freedom because they are not European Union citizens,” remarked Maurizio Veglio, a lawyer and expert in immigration law, in a statement to Reuters.
This development comes as anti-migrant rhetoric begins to affect Europe, with countries in the European Union—such as Hungary, Poland, Italy, and even the United Kingdom (which left the bloc in 2016)—introducing stringent measures to limit migrant influx and asylum seekers.
Some countries have rejected EU quotas for resettling migrants.
Notably, the United Kingdom has also proposed using Rwanda as an asylum-seeking processing center, a move that has been condemned by rights groups worldwide.