EU mulls ‘offshoring’ as Albania starts taking migrants for Italy

Albania is ready to start taking migrants redirected from Italy as the first of two ‘migrant processing centres’ has been completed. It comes as the EU is taking a new interest in the idea of ‘offshoring’ its migration problem.

Albania is expected to receive its first batch of migrants within days. According to local reports, a ship with 16 male migrants, who were rescued at sea on Sunday, is already on its way.

Lined with high security fences, the centre is about an hour’s drive north of Albania’s capital, Tirana, wedged between bare scree mountains and the village of Gjadër.

It is expected that several hundred Italian staff will work alongside Albanians. The agreement could see up to 3,000 migrants diverted from Italian shores to relieve pressure on islands like Lampedusa.

The two Albanian centres will reportedly cost Italy €670 million euros over five years.

Unlike the now defunct British scheme, which was designed to settle migrants in Rwanda, Italy will only use Albania for housing migrants whilst it processes their asylum claims. Successful applicants should subsequently be sent to Italy. Failed claimants will, in theory, be returned to their home country.

Amnesty fears for the human rights of the migrants, their conditions and their prospects. The NGO is also nervous that other countries may follow suit with similar agreements.

Despite dropping the Rwanda scheme within days of entering Downing Street, British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, last month praised the far-right Italian government for its “success in tackling irregular migration”, thanks he said in part to “tough enforcement”.

Latest migration figures out today from the EU’s border agency suggest that there were more than 47,000 attempts to cross the central Mediterranean so far this year, down two-thirds on last year.

But a similar number attempted to cross, further east, into Greece, where pressure remains high. An alarming number of migrants – doubled to 30,000 compared to last year – are trying the particularly long and treacherous route from Africa over the Atlantic to the Spanish Canary Islands.

The EU is putting its faith in its new Pact on Migration and Asylum, a raft of new laws finally passed shortly before this summer’s European elections which are supposed to more fairly and quickly process migrants, send failed applicants back and share the burden, by taking a share or more likely putting in cash, to those countries like Italy and Greece on the frontline.

But putting the new laws into practice is expected to take several years and meanwhile the sand has shifted.

Elections in France, the Netherlands, as well as bruising regional polls in Germany, have brought a different attitude. Some EU countries are now even advocating for a revision of the laws just passed, although there are differing views on what to do instead.

“I think what you see over the years is that the debate has clearly evolved. In one direction, I would say, to the right”, said one senior official speaking ahead of a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday when migration will be on the agenda.

Concepts that were previously seen as unpalatable, for example what the EU refers to as ‘externalisation’ of migration policy, are now being actively pursued.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, wrote to heads of states and government that “the idea of developing return hubs outside the EU” should be investigated. This is the idea – different from both the Rwanda and Albania schemes –  that failed asylum seekers could be put somewhere outside the European Union until they are taken back by the country they came from, or sent elsewhere.

It’s a sort of recycling of a failed policy from 2018 when the European Commission branded the hypothetical destinations as “disembarkation platforms”. At the time, the EU wasn’t able to find a country willing to accept the migrants and the idea was dropped in the face of fierce opposition.

An EU diplomat from a country now quite enthusiastic about ‘return hubs’ added: “We want to have this discussion, but we also want the checks on the legality and on the practicalities in order to make it actually work.”

A European Commission spokesperson confirmed that such a scheme would, at the very least, require a change to EU law.

The incoming European Commissioner for Migration, expected to be confirmed in the post next month, should actively consider “innovative solutions…The next European Commission needs to come up with new ways” to help deal with the migrant problem, said another EU diplomat.

In Albania, they are readying for the first arrivals. The ship containing 16 migrants, 10 Bangladeshis and six Egyptians, is expected to dock tomorrow.

“It is a new, courageous, unprecedented path”, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said. “But one that perfectly reflects the European spirit and has all the makings of a path to be taken with other non-EU nations as well.”