FLASH
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The Italian government has been put on alert over the costs of the pact for refugees...
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been very concerned about the costs of the agreement between Italy and Albania for housing asylum seekers in Shengjin and Gjadër. Her biggest fear was that the costs would increase a lot and the government would have a hard time explaining this to the Italian public opinion, especially given the difficulty of implementing the protocol signed in early November with the Albanian Prime Minister, Edi Rama.
For this reason, she asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and her undersecretary at the Presidency of the Council, Alfredo Mantovano, to work on reducing costs. But it didn't work: in the end, the draft law ratified yesterday by the Council of Ministers foresees a total cost of around 200 million euros.
This is the estimated figure, according to two sources within the government. The draft on paper only foresees costs of around 90 million euros, while the total annual expenses are "hidden" and until yesterday evening the legislative offices of Palazzo Chigi were still reviewing them, before sending the text to the Ministry of Economy.
The fact remains that no one in the government wanted to be publicly exposed after the bill was passed. Neither the prime minister nor the competent ministers - Matteo Piantedosi (Interior), Antonio Tajani (Foreign), Carlo Nordio (Justice), did not want to present the data at the press conference.
The draft law was presented to the Council of Ministers from Tajani, Mantovano and Piantedosi and consists of 7 articles that regulate jurisdiction and organizational provisions for the implementation of the protocol. The reference authorities will be the Prefecture and Police Headquarters of Rome and the jurisdiction will be Italian, creating a kind of extraterritorial jurisdiction of the Rome prosecutor's office for immigrant appeals.
The draft law stipulates that only immigrants "caught" in waters outside the EU can be brought to Albania. What is surprising, however, are the exorbitant costs of the operation. The decree foresees expenditures of about 60 million euros per year for 2024 alone, which will reach about 90 in the next five years.
But there are some costs that are not shown in the bill - such as the reimbursement of expenses for lawyers who cannot hold hearings remotely, including the costs to be paid to Albania for the agreement and for the ships to transport the migrants. In total, they amount to around 200 million euros. In absolute value many times higher, compared to the 19 million euros that have been spent on the new camps that will be built in Italy in 2024. / Adapted "Pamphlet" from "Dago Spia"
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