In the middle of the night at the beginning of a typical working week, between 14 Sunday and 15 Monday 2024, 16 men were intercepted by the Italian Coast Guard while attempting to cross the Mediterranean. These men were then sent to Albania, as the first test subjects of the brand-new Italy-Albania Protocol.
The Protocol “for the strengthening of collaboration on migration issues” was signed in November of last year and ratified in February 2024, but was not executed until last Monday, 14 October 2024, when it casually began impacting the lives of these 16 individuals.
With this act, Albania recognises Italy’s right to the use of an area of the port of Schëngjin for entry procedures and a structure located in the hinterland, in Gjader, for carrying out asylum and repatriation procedures. The Italian Interior Ministry confirmed on Monday night that 10 Bangladeshis and six Egyptians—all of whom arrived from Libya—were rescued on Sunday in international waters and were on their way aboard the Libra, an Italian naval vessel, to the Balkan nation.
The Italian ship that docked at Schëngjin after two days of navigation with a handful of people onboard and a capacity of 300 exposes the uselessness of such a transfer, which cost more than €250,000. The goal, in fact, is not to manage migration flows, asylum procedures or arrivals, but rather to act as if the Italian government is managing it, just for propaganda purposes.
There is no quick fix when dealing with migrations, as they are not a problem but a human phenomenon, and thus, are timeless and will not end. Data shows this well. According to the Italian Interior Ministry, the number of landings to Italy between 1 January–31 December 2023 was 157,652. Despite the various laws and policies implemented by Meloni’s government to curb migration, such as extending the amount of time migrants spend in pre-deportation detention centres (CPRs), ordering the construction of new CPRs, expanding the list of so-called “safe countries of origin” to deny asylum more quickly, and hindering the work of humanitarian ships in the Mediterranean, Italy in 2023 saw an increase of +80% in migrants’ arrivals, compared to the previous year.
Italy’s agreement with Albania is elementary in its aspirations—to reduce migration flows to Italy that the Italian government has deemed “illicit”, and to convey a sense of control to the public—but its method of implementation is complex and perplexing.
The Protocol, which will cost Italy €670m over five years, regards people “rescued” only in international waters, picked up only by the Italian Coast Guard, only if from countries of origin that are considered safe by Italy, and if deemed not to be vulnerable. All of these elements raise concerns, and the last in particular has already posed a serious problem in this initial, highly-publicised operation.
The EU Reception Conditions Directive and the Italian law in its Legislative Decree No. 142/2015 try to define “vulnerable persons” in a five-line quote. No legal definition, however, no matter how long or precise, could capture the reality of people fleeing from their homes, forced away from their families, risking being enslaved and tortured in Libya, and crossing international waters and borders while knowing they might die.
The “vulnerability” framework is nonetheless ever-present in migration-related agreements and policies, and is intended to convey a sense of protection of basic human rights and respect of international obligations. Indeed, the Italy-Albania Protocol provides for at least three moments of screening of the people onboard, in order to identify potential vulnerabilities: one on the Italian Coast Guard vessel; one on the Libra, carrying people to Albania, and the last one in the port of Schëngjin. Yet only individuals that visibly and undoubtedly fit into the aforementioned categories are seen as “vulnerable”, i.e. women, children, elders, and disabled persons. Meanwhile, the often-hidden vulnerability of persons suffering from mental disorders and/or who were subjected to torture, sexual violence, or labour trafficking, that tends not to reveal itself easily even with time and ad hoc professionals, will risk to be neglected and will bring these individuals, often men, to Albania, to face accelerated border procedures in prison-like centres and potential deportations.
Indeed, among the 16 people intercepted and taken to Albania, at least four—two minors and two people with health problems—had vulnerable profiles discovered only at their third, and last, screening. They started their return trips back to Italy only a few hours after having set foot on Albanian territory.
According to the Protocol, people will be identified in Schëngjin and then transferred to a former military base in Gjader, where they will be held in prefabricated housing, surrounded by high walls and security cameras, while waiting for their asylum applications to be processed by Italy. They will also have to grapple with a videoconferencing system that casts serious doubt on the quality, fairness, and efficiency of such procedures for determination of refugee status.
Asylum seekers will be able to communicate with their lawyers in the same way, remotely, and are expected to receive final decisions within 28 days, as opposed to in Italy, where asylum seekers wait even years for their hearings and final decisions. However, in Italy, they are at least able to meet with numerous aid associations working to support them during their waiting periods, whether through legal assistance, Italian language courses, job orientations, psychological support, et cetera, and to reflect about their past and their possible traumas.
Asylum seekers whose requests are turned down in Albania will be detained before their eventual repatriation, but neither the Protocol nor the ratification bill provide indications on how the removal will be carried out in practice. Moreover, no clear solution is identified either for those migrants who are recognised as in need of international protection—as if this will never be the case—or for those who will not apply for international protection at all.
Indeed, the vast majority of requests are expected to be rejected under the pretext that the countries that the most asylum seekers come from are considered safe, according to a list that was recently expanded from 15 to 21 nations to 21, including Bangladesh, Colombia, Peru, and Egypt, among others.
The designation of an asylum seeker’s country of origin as safe has significant procedural consequences: an accelerated border procedure with limited time limits for the hearing, the decision, and the appeal; a reversed burden of proof, so that it is up to the asylum seeker to refute the presumption of safety of the country and prove the threats they face; and the non-automatic application of the suspension of repatriation operations during the appeal, which normally guarantees the right of the applicant to remain on the territory pending the decision. These seriously negative impacts affect all of the asylum seekers that will be taken to Albania.
From 1 January to 22 October 2024, 55.036 people have landed in Italy, mainly Bangladeshis (11,102) and Syrians (10,315), followed by Tunisians (7,259), but the majority are people considered “Others” with unspecified nationalities (11,477). It is unclear, then, how it is possible to separate people based on their nationalities during SAR operations or upon landing and bring only people coming from certain allegedly “safe” countries of origin to Albania, with all these procedural consequences, when even official records from the Italian Interior Ministry shows such difficulty in identifying a nationality in the majority of cases.
The designation of certain countries as “safe”, even if provided by EU Directives, has been increasingly criticised and its legitimacy condemned, even by the Court of Justice of the European Union recently. The judgment of 4 October 2024 of the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Case C‑406/22 affirms some fundamental principles of EU law on the asylum procedures for asylum seekers coming from countries of origin designated as safe, and is destined to have particularly important effects on the Italy-Albania Protocol.
The Court of Justice of the European Union stated that the designation of a country as a safe country of origin depends on the possibility of demonstrating that “in a general and uniform manner there is never any recourse to persecution, torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and that these conditions must be respected throughout the territory of the third country concerned. This means that if a third country provides evidence of profiles or regions establishing that there are chances of persecution, no matter how small or remote, this country cannot be considered a safe state to return citizens to, nor can the application of accelerated asylum procedures be justified.
Thanks to this important judgement, on 18th October the Tribunal of Rome did not validate the detention of the 12 migrants brought to Albania, as their countries of origin cannot be considered safe, and ordered their transfer to Italy within the ordinary reception system.
In the meantime, while these people were brought to Albania only to make their return to Italy and its ordinary immigration and asylum framework and the Italian government started an appeal against the Tribunal’s decision to protect the future of the Meloni-Rama Protocol, more than 2,000 people have landed by themselves on the tiny southern Italian island of Lampedusa, just like before.
Michela Pugliese is Migration and Asylum Researcher at Euro-Med Monitor
Originally published in Euro-Med Monitor
