The Italian military ship Pound It arrived at the port of Shengjin, in Albania, at eight in the morning, and shortly after, at 9:39, the 16 migrants rescued on Monday in the Mediterranean began to disembark. They descended in a group of four and in just 15 minutes they were all on the ground. They will be the first to stay in the new detention center that Italy has built in the Balkan country, after the controversial agreement signed with the Government of Tirana in 2023. The military ship stands out over the fishing boats in the small port of this tourist beach town and hotels. The Albanian authorities do not allow the press, which is 200 meters away from the ship, to approach.
He Pound It is docked on the dock in front of the reception and identification center built by Italy, with barracks and delimited by a wall, where the 16 deported people (10 Bengalis and 6 Egyptians) will undergo a medical examination. Then they will be able to make their asylum requests right there and the 48-hour period will begin for a judge in Rome to validate or reject the request to initiate an accelerated management procedure with retention of the affected person, the method that Italy is going to use in Albania. It is a decisive procedure and full of unknowns, because the judge can deny permission. This is what the courts of Palermo and Catania are doing, in fact, in 90% of the cases. The judicial issue is the real litmus test for the Italian Government, to check if this new system in Albania can work. The EU is also very attentive, because the European Commission is considering extending it and takes it as an experiment.
Among the many questions pending answers is what will happen if the judge rejects the request to apply the rapid procedure to these 16 people. In principle, they should be transferred to Italy, because they cannot stay in Albania and this would complete an absurd trip. The cost of transporting them to Albania has been calculated at 18,000 euros per person. The center in Albania costs 800 million over five years.
The key to the rejection or acceptance of the request for a rapid procedure is a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice that has reduced from 22 to 7 the countries considered safe to whose citizens Italy can apply this rapid asylum processing and retention system, and if This is the case of expulsion, at the border. It is the pillar on which the entire protocol devised in Albania is based, and if it fails, it could collapse. And the fact is that the ruling has left out of this procedure all the main countries of origin of migrants who arrive in Italy through the Mediterranean, such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Precisely on this first Italian ship that has just docked in Shengjin, the migrants are from Bangladesh and Egypt. Among the only seven countries considered safe by the European court, there is only one African country, Cape Verde, with very few arrivals, and the rest are Balkan, including, paradoxically, Albania.
The 16 migrants, once the first arrival procedures have been carried out in the Shengjin center, where there are no beds and it is only transit, will be transferred by buses to the large detention center in Gjader, 23 kilometers away. It is a large Italian prison on Italian soil outside the EU. The inmates can’t get out of there. It has capacity for a thousand seats. It is there where deported migrants will remain detained waiting for their files to be resolved. In theory, according to this quick procedure, it should be in 28 days. Then, if their asylum request is rejected, they will have to be repatriated, it is not yet clear how. It is not known if by plane or boat from Albania, or before they will have to go to Italy.