ActionAid's denunciation: 'The Cpr in Albania costs 114,000 euro a day and will only be open 5 days in 2024'

"The most expensive, inhuman and useless tool in the history of Italian migration policies". With these words ActionAid and the University of Bari define the Gjader CPR, which in 2024 was "effectively operational" for just five days at a daily cost of 114,000 euro. The dossier, published on the 'Trattenuti' portal, examines the costs and efficiency of the Albanian centre, which came into being following the conclusion of the controversial protocol between Rome and Tirana. By the end of March 2025, ActionAid and Unibari explain, 400 places had been built in Gjader. "For the construction alone (including the non-housing facility in Shengjin) contracts were signed, with a generalised use of direct contracting, for 74.2 million," the research reads.

A 'fundamental investment', a 'model widely appreciated' in Europe. A "concrete, structured and effective response that will allow, once fully operational, to drastically reduce reception costs and speed up repatriations, in line with the new European regulations that will come into force next year". This is how Viminale sources talk about the protocol between Italy and Albania, back at the centre of the controversy over the costs of the Cpr in Gjader analysed by ActionAid and the University of Bari.

It cost over 153,000 euro to set up an actual place in Albania. The comparison with the cost of setting up similar facilities in Italy is pitiless: in 2024, the Ctra in Porto Empedocle cost 1 million euro to set up 50 actual places (just over 21,000 euro per place)'. Moreover, according to the data published on the portal, for the hospitality and catering of the police forces deployed on Albanian territory, Italy spent an amount of around 528 thousand euro. "Giorgia Meloni must apologise to the Italians, because the numbers related to the costs of her illegal operation Albania are an insult even to those millions of people who are in trouble today," says Pd secretary Elly Schlein. While Avs with Bonelli and Fratoianni speak of 'failure announced'. Italia Viva vice president Davide Faraone brands the Albanian cpr as 'the most expensive in history' while +Europa secretary Riccardo Magi speaks of a government that 'burns hundreds of millions'.

In updating the data on all the CPRs present in Italy, ActionAid and the Apulian Athenaeum point out that in 2024 there was the lowest number of repatriations in the last ten years. "Only 41.8% (2,576) of the people entering a detention centre, out of a total of 6,164, were repatriated - they explain. Despite the ever-increasing resources diverted to administrative detention, even in 2024, only 10.4% of people who received a removal order were repatriated from Italian CPRs".

According to data reported at the end of last year, there are 11 Cpr in Italy for an official capacity of the detention system for foreigners of 1,522 places. To this must be added the 1,033 places officially implemented at the 3 detention centres for asylum seekers (Ctra), bringing the total number of places to 2,555. But, according to the data, the facilities are operating at 46% of the official capacity. "In the light of as many as 263 empty places out of the total of 1,164 available," explains Fabrizio Coresi, migration expert for ActionAid, "the attempt to use the Cpr in Gjader to detain the irregular foreign population present in Italy appears completely irrational and illogical. "The use of detention as a tool of asylum policy marks an epochal paradigm shift, which raises serious questions about the objectives of an instrument with such an impact on people's fundamental rights," adds Giuseppe Campesi, of the University of Bari. "Questions that have found a direct reflection in the significant growth of exits for failure to validate or extend the detention order by the judicial authorities.