Italy-Albania migration deal is unacceptable says leading socialist MEP

A deal to keep migrants in Albania while waiting for their asylum applications to be processed by Italy is “unacceptable” and “not compatible with legislation”, the Spanish socialist MEP Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar told Euractiv.

The Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama signed an agreement on Monday (6 November) to bring individuals rescued from the Mediterranean by Italian-flagged vessels to Albania for asylum application processing. Italy would be in control over the entire process and have sovereignty in Albania with the individuals leaving the country in case of approval or refusal.

“We have to know more in order to assess it properly. However, it seems again a wrong move in the wrong direction. If it is what it seems, it is unacceptable. It seems an externalisation not only of the external borders of the EU, but a worrisome externalisation of the asylum procedures themselves,” Aguilar told Euractiv during the European Socialist Party (PES) congress in Málaga last weekend.

Rama is a member of the PES and the deal with Meloni has created some tension within the European socialist family.

Problems emerging

Before the beginning of the congress, the Italian Democratic Party tried to put on the table a discussion on the deal, different sources from the Democratic Party told Euractiv.

“Trying to help Italy in this situation, where no one in Europe seems to have a solution everyone can agree on, may not be the best, but it is certainly the least Albania can and must do,” Rama wrote on X (ex-Twitter), a few days after the agreement was signed.

“Italy and Albania today sign an important memorandum of understanding that aims to combat human trafficking and prevent irregular migration flows,” declared Meloni on the day of the deal.

According to the president of the socialist group at the European Parliament Iratxe García Pérez, it is “too soon” to make any concrete decision, she told journalists during the congress.

However, Aguilar sharply commented on the deal adding that it is “absolutely incompatible not only with the legislation which is now in effect, but with the legislation we are intending to put in place,” he pointed out, referring to international law and the legislative files on migration – the so-called migration pact –  which the EU is trying to approve before next June’s European elections to create an EU framework of migration management.

Aguilar chairs the Civil Liberties Committee in the European Parliament and is the rapporteur on the Crisis Management Regulation, one of the key files of the migration pact. 

The Italy-Albania deal is particularly problematic according to the socialist MEP, since the Balkan country is not bound by EU legislation because it is not a EU member state but is a candidate country to enter the Union.

“We only hope that we will put an end to this sequence of wrongdoings, by putting in place, finally, a migration and asylum pact at the European scale as a response to the migration situation,” Aguilar concluded.

Also the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović expressed concerns about the agreement: “The [Italy-Albania deal on migration] creates an ad hoc extra-territorial asylum regime characterised by many legal ambiguities,” it was stated in a press release published on Monday (13 November).

“In practice, the lack of legal certainty will likely undermine crucial human rights safeguards and accountability for violations, resulting in differential treatment between those whose asylum applications will be examined in Albania and those for whom this will happen in Italy,” she added.

[Edited by Benjamin Fox/Nathalie Weatherald]

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