Italy’s plan to run migrant processing centres in Albania is still far from complete one year after it was announced by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Despite high expectations, the project has faced legal, political, and practical obstacles that have slowed progress and limited its impact.
The Italy Albania migrant plan was designed to allow Italian authorities to process asylum requests outside the EU, with a target of handling up to 3,000 people each month. In total, the centres were expected to process as many as 36,000 migrants a year through fast-track asylum procedures.
However, the scheme quickly ran into legal problems. Italian courts repeatedly blocked the detention of migrants transferred to Albania, ruling that the countries many asylum seekers came from, including Egypt and Bangladesh, could not be considered safe for repatriation. As a result, the main facility in Gjader was later converted into a repatriation centre rather than an asylum processing hub.
So far, only a few hundred migrants have been held at the centres, and actual repatriations have remained very low, with only a few dozen people returned. This has raised serious concerns over the effectiveness of the project, especially given its high cost.
The overall budget for the scheme is estimated at nearly one billion euros over five years. The Italian-run infrastructure in Albania includes an asylum centre for up to 880 people, a repatriation centre with space for 144 migrants, and a small prison with capacity for 20 detainees. A hotspot was also built at the port of Schengjin to receive migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean by Italian naval vessels.
Attempts to move migrants to Albania from Italy have repeatedly failed. Judges in both lower courts and the Rome appeals court ruled against the detentions, arguing that EU and international asylum rules were not being fully respected. These rulings effectively stopped transfers and left facilities largely underused.
In August, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU governments can label third countries as safe by decree, but only if courts can review those decisions. It also clarified that until the EU’s new Migration and Asylum Pact comes into force in June 2026, no country can be deemed fully safe unless it protects all parts of its population.
Italian appeals court judges have now referred fresh legal questions about the Rome-Tirana agreement to the European Court of Justice. At the centre of the dispute is whether Italy has the legal authority to process asylum seekers abroad when asylum policy is regulated at EU level. It remains unclear whether upcoming EU migration reforms will be enough to revive the Albania project and make the centres fully operational, as promised by the Italian government.