Govt working on solutions for Albania centres - Piantedosi

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 12 - The government is working on solutions to allow Italian-run migrant centres in Albania to function, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told a question time session at the Lower House on Wednesday.
    "The government is at work to implement solutions that are able to overcome the obstacles met so far, enabling the facilities in Albania that are part of a multipurpose system to fully function and developing their significant potential", Piantedosi said.
    "In fact, in addition to a hotspot and a detention centre for accelerated border procedures, a permanence and repatriation centre is already present in Albania today, whose use will not lead to any addition cost", he noted. The minister added that the Albanian project will "move forward with the conviction that the fight against the criminal business connected to irregular immigration, which also takes advantage of the instrumental use of asylum requests, is a priority to govern the phenomenon of migration respecting international and European obligations".
    The implementation of a protocol between Rome and Tirana for the fast-track processing of asylum seekers at the facilities has so far been stymied by Italy's courts.
    The two centres of Shengjin and Gjader are currently empty after Italian judges failed to validate the detention of the first three groups of migrants taken there in October, November and January.
    The detention of the migrants who were brought to Albania under the innovative but controversial government scheme to deter departures has been quashed pending a European Court of Justice ruling, expected later this month.
    The detentions were nixed under a previous ECJ ruling, which did not concern Italy, that the countries of provenance of the asylum seekers taken to Albania - Egypt and Bangladesh - are not wholly safe for repatriation on all their territories. (ANSA).