42 Incidents in Five Weeks: Italy Holds Migrants in Albania, and the EU Is Thinking of Copying the Model

Italy came up with a model: migrant centres outside its own territory, in Albania, where Italian law applies as far as it is practical and oversight reaches as far as it is allowed. Amnesty International published a report on what happens inside. The numbers need no commentary.

At the Gjader centre, 42 critical incidents were documented in a period of just five weeks - between 11 April and 16 May last year. Among them: cases of self-harm, two attempted hangings and violent protests. According to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's party, over 500 people passed through the centre.

Eve Geddie, director of Amnesty's office at the European institutions, was blunt: „It is entirely clear that the Italy-Albania cooperation model cannot be implemented in line with Italy's human rights obligations.”

Why the location is the entire point

Gjader was opened in 2024, ostensibly for rescued migrants. It was then repurposed into a place holding male asylum seekers awaiting deportation. The report says detention in Albania endangers the rights to asylum and to legal protection - specifically because access to lawyers and courts is restricted.

That is not a side effect. That is the function. The distance between the detainee and the court is exactly what makes the model attractive to those who designed it.

Amnesty also states that the Italian government blocked independent oversight, limited parliamentary scrutiny and bypassed standard legislative procedures. The Italian government declined to comment. The research relied on correspondence with ministries, court documents, parliamentary reports, consultations with UN agencies and conversations with lawyers - so not on anonymous claims.

And now comes the part that concerns us directly

Despite all this, the model is gaining ever more support in the EU. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani recently argued for similar centres across African countries and in transit countries.

Transit countries. The Balkan route runs right through here. When Brussels starts looking for who will be the next Gjader, the candidate list will not be long and it will not be far away.

Albania has already shown what it means to host someone else's deportation policy: a centre on your soil, someone else's rules inside, and responsibility scattered widely enough that nobody is to blame. The question for every government in the region that gets such an offer is simple - what exactly do you get in return, and is it worth what it costs.