Albania decree, Chamber gives green light: transfers to Gjader's CPR secured
With the amendments passed in committee, the margins for the judges' intervention are further reduced. The submission of an asylum application does not lead to the return of migrants to Italy. Extended cases in which accelerated procedures for examination can be applied
4' min read
Key points
- The legal 'stamp' on transfers from Italian prisons
- Amendments to armour retention
- The Supreme Court: Albanian centre equivalent to Italian Cpr
- The way to overcome non-validation
- Two patrol boats donated to Albania
- The new powers of the Viminale Immigration Directorate
- Cpr detention also possible for asylum seekers
- Accelerated procedure extended to asylum seekers in the Cpr in Albania
4' min read
While the number of migrants in the Gjader detention centre for repatriation rose to 43, with the new transfer of 28 foreigners by ship last Friday, the Chamber of Deputies on 15 May gave the first green light (126 yes and 80 no), after the vote of confidence on Wednesday 14 May, to the conversion of law decree 37/2025 that allowed the transfer to Albania of people already detained in Italian CPRs and subject to a deportation order.
The legal 'stamp' on transfers from Italian prisons
.Paragraph 1 of the first article of the decree, by intervening on the law 14/2024 that ratified the Rome-Tirana protocol of 6 November 2023, extended the category of persons who can be taken to facilities in Albania, including the recipients of validated or extended detention orders. This step allowed the reactivation of the operation, after that for migrants rescued in international waters and coming from so-called safe countries, the only ones to whom the Albania fast-track procedures could originally be applied, judges had always suspended the validation of the detentions while waiting for the European Court of Justice's ruling, expected between late May and early June, on the legitimacy of the list of safe countries drawn up at national level.
Amendments to armour restraints
With the package of three amendments tabled by the rapporteur Sara Kelany (Fdi) and approved in the Constitutional Affairs Committee, the government and the majority also armour the transfers from the Italian Cpr to the one in Gjader from the interventions of the judges of the Court of Appeal in Rome, who had refused the validation of 18 migrants transferred to the Albanian centre in April, returning them to Italy. The reason? They had applied for international protection once they arrived in Albania and therefore, according to the Italian magistrates, were not among those who were entitled to stay in Gjader to carry out asylum procedures.
The Supreme Court: Albanian centre equivalent to Italian Cpr
In the meantime, however, came sentence no. 17510 of the first penal section of the Supreme Court of Cassation (see Il Sole 24 Ore of 10 May) to establish a clear principle of law, welcomed by the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, and by the entire majority: it is legitimate to detain a foreigner in the Gjader repatriation centre in Albania even after the application for international protection has been submitted, because the facility is to all intents and purposes equal to Italian centres and the asylum procedure can be carried out without the migrant returning to Italy.
The way to overcome non-validation
.The amendments to the Decree passed in committee move in the same direction. First, they provide that a foreigner transferred to Gjader remains there, as provided for in Article 6(3) of Legislative Decree 142/2015, when there are reasonable grounds to believe that the application for international protection submitted there was made for the sole purpose of delaying or preventing the execution of refoulement or expulsion.
