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Western partners have tried to get Albania to help with migrants since it welcomed thousands of Afghans left exposed to the Taliban after the withdrawal of Western powers in 2020. The list started with the UK prime minister.
Albania's agreement for immigrants with Italy is "unique" despite the interest from other governments, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama has said, destroying the hopes of some EU capitals to repeat this measure.
Rome and Tirana agreed last year to set up centers in Albania, where several thousand migrants headed for Italy would be registered and then wait for their asylum claim to be examined by Italian officials.
The plan drew criticism from rights groups but also sparked interest from some centre-right European governments. The center-right European People's Party even made it part of its election platform for June's European Parliament elections.
" It's one time, 100 percent one time ," Rama said in an interview with the Financial Times. He said other governments had approached him to see if they could repeat the deal with Italy.
" I said no. Because it doesn't make sense to me. Italy is very special for us, more than a strategic relationship. It's a deep-rooted friendship ," said Rama.
Rama said the agreement with Italy was based on a long history of mutual law enforcement — the Italian coast guard helping Albania control immigration in the 1990s and more recent joint efforts against drug smuggling.
Critics argue that the plan is fraught with human rights violations and costly legal problems. But it is not a new idea.
Western partners have tried to get Albania to help with migrants since it welcomed thousands of Afghans left exposed to the Taliban after the withdrawal of Western powers in 2020. The list started with the UK prime minister.
" Boris Johnson called me and said, I commend your leadership, let's do something together. Let's have an agreement for Britain to bring illegal immigrants to Albania to keep them there, to process them. I said, I'm sorry, this is not possible ," Rama recalls.
Unlike the Italian deal, which is for housing up to 3,000 people at a time, the UK offer was not "a fixed number", Rama said.
" It was for everyone who comes to Britain. . . as a transit. I said no way. Then, we had others that I won't mention. Among the richest countries in Europe ", said Rama for "FT".
He warned against treating immigration as a security problem and especially for governments trying to relocate it. "This issue cannot be dealt with by transferring the problem," he said.
" In addition to Albania, other Balkan countries could also help if the process were well structured and kept within international law ," he said. But Europe turned it into an ideological, electoral issue and forgot that it would need people to avoid a "demographic winter" and a consequent economic decline.
More than a million Albanians have immigrated to the EU and the UK over the years, a third of the country's total population.
The war in Ukraine had finally changed the game for enlargement, Rama said, marking the "best record" for the outgoing EU executive. "Also thanks to Vladimir Putin, a change has already happened."
The EU's proposed new plans to engage Western Balkan countries in practical ways of cooperation, such as easy and cheap money transfers or reduced cross-border trade bureaucracy, would have been "impossible to imagine five years ago," he said.
" It's not about money ," he said, referring to a 6 billion euro package offered to the Balkans - an amount most countries in the region consider modest.
" It is about opening paths to integrate and have the same conditions as the members, while not yet being a member ," added Rama.
A critic of the EU's slow enlargement process, Rama noted that the bloc's moral authority is waning.
" Europe is balkanized. We still look to Europe as a place where we will protect ourselves from the outbursts of nationalism that lead us to conflicts and wars. [But] nationalist movements in Europe have not only found a space in politics, but have infected or affected [other movements] ," concluded Rama. / Financial Times
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