Dozens of Italian police and social workers sent by the Italian government to migrant centres in Albania have returned home after it emerged that the facilities, touted as a model for reducing refugee arrivals, have been empty for weeks, The Guardian reports.
Just over a month after the much-publicised opening of the multi-million dollar asylum seeker detention centres in Albania, which were supposed to receive up to 3,000 people a month, more than 50 police officers were transferred back to Italy a fortnight ago and dozens of social workers left over the weekend as their presence in Albania was deemed “unnecessary.”
Since opening on October 11, only 24 asylum seekers have been sent to centres in Albania, with the aim of repatriation to their countries of origin. Five of them spent less than 12 hours in the centre, the rest stayed for just over 48 hours. They were all transferred to Italy after Italian judges deemed it illegal to detain them in Albania before repatriating them to countries, such as Bangladesh and Egypt, that Rome considers “safe.” In doing so, the judges upheld a October 4 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) that a country outside the bloc cannot be declared safe until its entire territory is deemed safe.
As a result, the centres, introduced by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as a new model for setting up processing and holding centres for asylum seekers outside the EU, have been empty for more than a month.
As the government tries to balance the budget by cutting funds for education, health and welfare, opposition parties have labelled the deal, which will cost around €1bn (£830m) over five years, a “financial disaster.”
“Mission accomplished!,” said Riccardo Magi, the president of the left-wing opposition party Più Europa (More Europe). “The government has succeeded in the effort to repatriate. Migrants? No, Italian operators sent to Albania, who will be returning home by the weekend. The government first wasted a huge sum of public funds, then with the centres emptied, brought back some police personnel to Italy, and now even social workers are returning home. This is an epochal failure.”
The scheme has led to a dispute between the authorities and judges, who have been accused by national oriented parties of obstructing the project.
Nicola Gratteri, Naples’ chief prosecutor and one of the most respected judges in Italy, said in a television interview this week:
“I don’t want to give a political judgment, but I say that at this moment in Albania there are 250 law enforcement officers who are hardly doing anything. It’s a waste to keep 250 police officers on a mission in Albania, so I think they should be brought back to Italy where we are struggling with staffing shortages for thousands of policemen.”
The government said the centre in Albania would “remain open and operational” and that the transfer of officers to Italy was in line with staffing needs. However, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s credibility has been threatened after she made immigration a major issue in her election campaign. In the past, she has criticised her predecessors for wasting public money to tackle the migration crisis. The sea transport on an Italian warship of just eight people who arrived in Albania over the weekend in mid-November cost 250,000 euros – more than 31,000 euros for each asylum seeker on board.
Elisabetta Piccolotti, and MP for the Green and Left Alliance party, said:
“The government has failed knowing it would fail. They have spent a mountain of money and played with people’s rights. This will remain in history as a shameful page for our country.”
