FLASH
Shkruar nga Luigi Bisignani
In the face of prison overcrowding, with a percentage that exceeds 130% and the increase in suicides of prisoners, reasonable proposals have been made to use the area north of the city of Lezha, for Albanian prisoners sentenced in Italy.
Caught between ordinary justice and accounting, Giorgia Meloni is exploring new avenues, including turning Albanian migrant camps into prisons to house prisoners linked to the Albanian mafia, who number around 2,800 in Italy.
The prosecutor of the Republic of Naples warned: " The mafia of the future, not only in Italy, but also in Europe, will be the Albanian one ".
The Prime Minister should be recognized for the fact that in these two years of governance she has shown a sensitive ability to pragmatically adapt to the established objectives. Emblematic was the latest realpolitik masterpiece that brought its most trusted minister, Raffaele Fitto, to the EU executive against everything and everyone. But with illegal immigration comes a tough test. The stakes are high: at the center of everything is the "Mattei Plan" for curbing the landings in Sicily and part of which are the garrisons in Albania. The aim was to transfer desperate people from Africa, rescued in international waters by Navy and Finance ships, directly to Shengjin and Gjadër, to await the bureaucratic procedures of their fate. Today the vision has changed, in fact the latest news reports that almost the entire staff of the center has withdrawn to Italy. It now remains to be determined how these sites can be used in a cost/benefit ratio that so far leans in favor of the former.
The cooperation between Rome and Tirana has deep roots, it is enough to remember the biblical exodus of 1991 - immortalized in the film "L'America" by Gianni Amelio - with 20,000 immigrants fleeing post-communist Albania crammed into the Vlora ship which anchored in Bari.
In the following years, we continued with Italian missions such as "Alba" in 2017 and interventions after the earthquake in 2019, in which Italy was the first to intervene. Currently, the cooperation is even closer, including the Armed Forces, intelligence leaders and Albanian personalities. Exchanges between the two nations date back to the 15th century, with the birth of Arber communities in southern Italy. Bolstered by this collaboration, ongoing confidential talks are about the hypothesis of redeveloping immigration centers in prisons in order to relieve our increasingly overcrowded and unmanageable penitentiary system.
The idea is based on an effective protocol already in use since the time of the leaders Fatos Nano and Silvio Berlusconi, not to mention that Italy and Albania have been involved for years in ministerial agreements and in the prison department, so much so that the country has already in the past financed two prisons in Albania.
In the face of overcrowding in prisons, with percentages that exceed 130% and the increase in suicides of prisoners, reasonable proposals have been made to use the area north of the city of Lezha, for Albanian prisoners sentenced in Italy. The port of Shengjin, however, can receive migrants along the Balkan route, in cooperation with the European Union. These interventions would represent a "win-win" for both countries on opposite sides of the Adriatic.
The Albanian authorities would also like to use this opportunity to position themselves in the center of European attention, perhaps as a function of the EU accession process. The idea of transferring immigrants to Albania was born from the conversations between Giorgia Meloni and the then British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who illustrated the project of "deporting" immigrants to Rwanda. However, while Rwanda is thousands of kilometers from London, Albania is opposite Italy, making the project seem more feasible.
The idea was then perfected in the summer of 2023, during Meloni's holidays in Albania in talks with Prime Minister Edi Rama, who made his territory available to him. In parallel, the EU has reached an agreement on the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, approved by the Parliament and the European Council last May, which foresees that centers like the Italian ones in Albania will apply starting from 2026.
Despite numerous criticisms, including internal ones, in Europe the Albanian centers are considered a model to be studied, however the Italian plan seems to have arrived too early to be understood. Among the mistakes made were the lack of a solid organizational structure - capable of managing important details - and a legal task force that would block decisions, although the small number of migrants involved did not help.
The agreement signed last year between Rome and Tirana stipulated that Albania would host up to three thousand immigrants at a cost of at least 670 million euros over five years. The half-empty ship with less than 20 migrants, the high costs, the chosen country at risk of flooding, the poorly managed legal-political battle sent the media into a frenzy. With better management, multi-stakeholder coordination and deeper planning, the centers could have been fully operational and provided a concrete response.
The government has served the controversy on a silver platter, both for justice and for the opposition. Now we can only try to correct the situation, preventing an ambitious and daring project from turning into a political Titanic./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from " il Tempo "
Lini një Përgjigje