When Italy opened the centre in Gjadër, Albania, it was presented as an Italian experiment. Now the same experiment is being packaged as a European model - and on the list of possible partners, alongside Ghana, Senegal, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Egypt, Uganda, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and Armenia, stands Montenegro.

Italian interior minister Matteo Piantedosi will put the proposal to an emergency meeting of EU interior ministers. The idea is simple and that is precisely what makes it dangerously simple: anyone entering the EU illegally is sent to a centre in a third country, where their asylum claim and documents are processed. The funding? From the Union's budget. Who exactly pays, and how much - there is still no answer to that.

Why now

The meeting was called because of Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on Moroccan soil, where in recent days around 70,000 people tried to force their way into Spanish territory. Seventy thousand. That is not a number any administration can handle with existing procedures, and Rome knows it - so it is seizing the moment.

Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani makes no secret of whom the criticism targets. He called Spanish policy too permissive and Italy's "strict and measured", arguing that Europe cannot take in everyone indiscriminately. He added that the European Commission supports the Italian, not the Spanish, position. "We must build a common strategy on immigration," Tajani said, mentioning "the possibility of opening new centres on the Albanian model in various African countries".

The Balkans as an extension of the European border

This is the part to read slowly here. Albania is already the model. Montenegro is on the list. So the two Balkan countries knocking loudest on the EU's door to be let inside are being considered as places where the Union will hold what it does not want to hold at home.

It is an old scene with a new name. For years the Balkans have served as a waiting room, a buffer zone, a place to park the problem while Brussels thinks. The difference now is that this is being formalised for the first time into a proposal with a budget line. And it is worth asking: what does a country that agrees to such a thing get - faster integration, or just one more agreement that keeps it exactly where it is?

The numbers do not add up

There is one more detail that makes the whole idea look weaker than Rome would like. The centre in Gjadër, which Italy wants running at full capacity by the end of the year, is supposed to process up to 3,000 people a month for asylum procedures. At present it serves only for deportations, with limited capacity. So the model being proposed for the entire continent, in its only live version, still does not do the thing it is being proposed for.

In parallel, Italy will also push for stricter application of the Generalised System of Preferences - the mechanism tying trade concessions for developing countries to their willingness to take back their own undocumented citizens. In other words: trade becomes leverage. Whoever will not take people back will pay for it on the market.