An Italian ship with 16 migrants aboard arrived in the Albanian port of Shengjin on October 16, the first that Albanian authorities have agreed to accept under a controversial deal agreed with Rome in November.
The ship, the Libra, is said to be carrying 10 migrants from Bangladesh and six from Egypt who were rescued at sea after leaving Libya for the Italian island of Lampedusa. All 16 are males who have been deemed "safe" by Italian authorities.
Under the agreement, Tirana will accept migrants rescued while still at sea in international waters that fall within Italy's search-and-rescue area as their asylum requests are processed in two centers -- or reception camps -- in Albania. Both facilities will be staffed by Italian personnel and will operate under Italian jurisdiction, though security outside of the centers will be provided by Albanian guards.
As part of the process, the migrants retain their rights under international and EU law to apply for asylum in Italy. Judges will hear their asylum cases by video from Rome.
The plan, which Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described earlier this week as "bold" and "unprecedented," envisages the processing of up to 36,000 migrants a year in an attempt to ease a major issue that has plagued Italy and the European Union in general, with hundreds of thousands of migrants trying to enter the bloc via boats that set sail from northern Africa.
Some critics have warned the plan is flawed because the process for administering asylum cases is drawn out and those rejected are often not allowed back in their own countries because governments there restrict the number of repatriations.
Instead, those who do not qualify, the critics say, end up "leaking out" of detention centers and fan out across Europe illegally, forcing them to live under the radar.
Others question the cost of the program and whether its scope will make a difference in a country where 160,000 migrants arrived in 2023.
"In the last three days, more than 1,600 migrants have landed in Italy. An Italian ship is transporting 16 of them to Albania," Matteo Villa, a researcher at the researcher at the ISPI think tank, said in a post on X.
For Albania, the plan is a chance to bolster its case to join the European Union -- one of its main foreign policy goals -- by showing support and help for one of the bloc's most pressing problems.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said on October 15 that his country had rejected many requests from European countries to accept refugees but made an exception for Italy, which has long-standing ties with Tirana.
