M5S complains to Audit Court on Albania migrant transfer

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 21 - The populist leftwing opposition 5-Star Movement (M5S) on Monday lodged a complaint with the Audit Court over the government's recent transfer of 16 migrants to one of two new Italian-run processing centres in Albania claiming that the operation hurt State coffers.
    Italian media have said the 300,000 euros spent on the operation could have funded three-week Caribbean cruises for each migrant.
    The M5s caucus leader in the Constitutional Affairs Committee, Alfonso Colucci, said that "we ask whether it is possible to (claim) financial liability for the use of large public resources for the performance of activities not legitimized on the basis of the correct application of the law".
    The scheme, which has been held up after a Rome court ruled the Bangldeshi and Egyptian migrants didn't come from a safe country, will cost an estimated 800 million euros over five years and will process up to 3,000 migrants a year when up to speed.
    Some 157,000 migrants landed in Italy last year.
    Right-wing Premier Giorgia Meloni has said the project, agreed with centre-left Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, will deter migrants from setting off for Italy and Europe.
    Critics have said it unacceptably externalises the migrant issue and sets up a new Guantanamo, as well as being excessively expensive and addressing just a drop in the ocean of migrants heading for Italy.
    British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who binned the previous Conservative government's scheme to take migrants to Rwanda, and Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp have been among the foreign officials who have voiced interest in the project, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has held up as a model for others to follow.
    The 16 migrants were cut to 12 after two were found to be vulnerable and another two minors.
    photo: M5S leader and ex premier Giuseppe Conte (ANSA).