The small Adriatic port town of Šendjin (St. John the Medovski) in Albania, north of the capital Tirana. A new shelter for people seeking asylum in the European Union was established there, which is a kind of special Italian enclave on Albanian soil. The shelter is supervised by Albanian staff but managed by the Italian authorities.
That's how Đorđa Meloni and Edi Rama arranged it. Meloni is the Italian prime minister and president of the right-wing post-fascist party Brothers of Italy, and Rama is her Albanian colleague and president of the left-wing Socialist Party of Albania. Meloni and Rama reached an agreement during last year's visit of the Italian prime minister to the summer residence of the Albanian prime minister.
Asylum application processing - my pain, pass it on to someone else
Their project: transfer the processing of asylum requests from Italy to a safe third country - Albania. And for this purpose, build a shelter near the Albanian coast for up to 3.000 asylum seekers. In the beginning, there was criticism, but lately the heads of government and state of the EU countries have been following what Italy is doing in Albania with increasing curiosity.
The implementation of that project started just before the EU summit on migration in Brussels, and the first asylum seekers to arrive were a group of 16 migrants. They were intercepted by the Italian Coast Guard in international waters, south of the Italian island of Lampedusa.
If they had managed to reach Italian waters, they should not have been transferred to Albania. But this is how the Italian ship "Libra" with those 16 migrants sailed into a small Albanian port. It is a small town of about 8.000 inhabitants that also lives from tourism, from its beaches, lagoon and nature reserve along the Adriatic coast.
Welcome to "Italy"
But that small group of men from Bangladesh and Egypt cannot reach those beaches at all. Their journey to that small town takes them, accompanied by the Italian police, to the Italian reception center in the city port. There they are identified, registered, medical examinations are carried out and then they are driven for half an hour in an Italian police bus to a small village where mostly pensioners live. It is where the Italian shelter for asylum seekers is now located.
Six-meter high fence, two-story residential containers. There are also construction machines on part of that plot. There will be room for 3.000 asylum seekers, and the current capacity is 880 people.
One of the Italian soldiers opens a new container for us, which has room for four people. Inside there are four beds with clearly visible "Made in Italy" stickers. The entire center is divided into three areas. The largest is reserved for those who have applied for asylum and are awaiting a response. This should not last longer than four weeks, including the time, i.e. the possibility to make a decision on a possible appeal.
A slightly smaller area is the deportation area – for those asylum seekers whose applications have been rejected. And the third one is for potential criminals. All this behind fences and under surveillance cameras. Associates of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, reportedly have access to monitor the process.
That whole center is a kind of Italian experiment - a "historic, innovative agreement" with Albania "on the attitude towards migrants", as Italian Prime Minister Meloni says. It is a kind of friendly service and "debt repayment", because - Italy accepted numerous Albanian refugees in the past, Albanian Prime Minister Rama explained, and in Italian, the language spoken by many in Albania.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called that Italian experiment "an innovative way to combat illegal migration."
Export of asylum application processing - according to EU rules
Italy is trying what the governments of other EU countries have been thinking about: exporting the processing of asylum requests to a country outside the Union. But according to EU rules, as explained by Fabrizio Bucci, the Italian ambassador to Albania.
He was already there a few weeks before the start of the work of the shelter, in order to advertise this "experiment", and above all to remove all doubts: "Inside the shelter, Italian legislation is in force. The staff will be Italian: police officers, officials of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice. The rules that are also applied in migrant centers in Italy will be applied there," he says.
That Italian shelter for asylum seekers on Albanian soil was built and financed by Italy. According to reports, Albania will be paid around 16 million euros per year as compensation for the incurred costs, with the entire project costing up to 850 million euros - which is again being paid by Italy.
"Like birds in a cage"
Protests can be seen here and there in the Albanian port town. But in the village where the shelter was built, mostly older men who can be met on the streets don't mind. A local merchant even rejoices: "We are already making a profit, since the beginning of construction. You know, our village has a problem with people leaving. The situation has already changed with the construction workers, and when the migrants come, it will be even more lively."
Food products, as promised by the Italian authorities, should be bought first and foremost at the local level. There will also be a few jobs for non-Italians, they promise. The local population is not afraid of the refugees, who are mostly young men from countries that are considered safe.
Albanians are not timid, they point out in a village tavern. And otherwise, how can they get over the fence at all, asks one of the customers: "Only if they can fly six meters high, then they can." But they have no chance to get out of there. They are locked up like birds in a cage."
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