Migrants arriving in Italy will be temporarily housed in Albania

Italy and Albania agreed to jointly resolve the crisis with migrants arriving in Italy via the Mediterranean Sea. On Monday, at a meeting in Rome, the prime ministers of both countries, George Melona and Eda Ram, signed an agreement according to which camps for refugees will be built in Albania. They will be able to accommodate up to three thousand people at the same time.

Italy will finance the construction of the camps. They will be under Italian jurisdiction. Albania will ensure their safety. Migrants will be able to stay there while Italy processes their asylum applications. If asylum is refused, the migrants will be deported.

George Melona said that if the Italian authorities consider asylum requests quickly, up to 36,000 migrants can pass through such camps per hour. This will help relieve chronically overcrowded refugee reception centers in Italy. Melony emphasized that illegal migration has become one of the main problems of the European Union, and no EU country is capable of solving it alone.

She added that she highly values ​​cooperation with Albania, and that the Italian government will support the country’s next steps on the way to joining the European Union.

• The flow of illegal migrants to the south of Europe has been steadily growing in the last decade. Many of them sail across the Mediterranean Sea on ships and boats from Turkey, Libya, Tunisia and other countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Often the first place where they land is the islands of southern Italy: Lampedusa, Sicily and others. In April 2023, the Italian authorities introduced a state of emergency due to the fact that the ports in the southern regions of the country could no longer cope with the flow of arrivals.