An Italian court has dealt a major blow to Giorgia Meloni’s £557 million plan to send migrants to Albania by ruling that they cannot remain there and must all be brought back to Italy because Egypt and Bangladesh are “not safe countries”. The Telegraph has more.
The first group of 16 Egyptian and Bangladeshi men arrived at the facilities in northern Albania on Wednesday at the start of what had been hailed as an innovative new way of dealing with Europe’s illegal migration crisis. The model was being closely watched by other European countries, including Britain.
The 16 men were rescued in the central Mediterranean this month but instead of being shipped to Italian shores, as has happened with tens of thousands of migrants and refugees, they were transported to the Adriatic coast of Albania in an Italian navy ship.
A bilateral accord drawn up by Rome and Tirana last year envisages migrants being taken to the port of Shengjin in northern Albania and then transported by bus to a brand new facility that was built on a former Albanian air force base dating back to the Cold War, next to the village of Gjader, about 15 miles inland.
There they are meant to have their asylum requests assessed. Under the plan, they would be either deemed genuine refugees fleeing war or persecution, in which case they will be sent to Italy, or economic migrants, in which case they should be sent back to their home countries.
The conservative coalition run by Ms. Meloni had hoped that the system could handle as many as 36,000 migrants and refugees a year.
But a ruling on Friday by a court in Rome has now thrown the entire five-year scheme, estimated to cost €670 million (£557 million), into doubt.
The court ruled that the migrants cannot be sent back to Bangladesh and Egypt because they are not safe countries.
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