Asylum policy at a high price: Italy's expensive Albanian venture

Tuesday, Sep 23, 2025

Der Standard

Italy’s costly asylum project outsourcing procedures to Albania faces questions about its cost-benefit ratio.

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[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

Italy’s asylum policy, which involves outsourcing procedures to Albania, is proving extremely costly and its cost-benefit analysis remains unclear. Following Giorgia Meloni’s election as Prime Minister in late 2022, her plan aimed to fundamentally change migration policy by intercepting migrants at sea and bringing them to two centers in Shëngjin and Gjadër, where Italian judges and police would handle asylum proceedings under Italian law, preventing boat refugees from ever entering EU territory.

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