Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi
said Saturday that the first migrants will arrive next week at
two migrant centres Italy has set up on Albanian territory.
"We expect to start next week," Piantedosi said at an event
organized by daily newspaper the Il Foglio.
"We realistically expect the first people will be taken to the
centres in Albania next week.
"There will be no ribbon cutting," he added, saying the centres
"are similar to those in Italy" with "light detention" regimes.
"There is no barbed wire, there is health care," he said.
"Everyone can apply for international protection (at them) and
obtain it within days".
The centres, the result of an agreement between Italian Premier
Giorgia Meloni and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, were
initially supposed to have opened in May but there have been
construction and procedural delays.
The scheme has been criticised by rights groups as externalising
migration processing and creating a new Guantanamo but several
other European countries have expressed interest in emulating
it.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer voiced special interest in
the scheme, and other moves that have brought migration to Italy
down this year, on a visit to Rome last month.
Meloni has stressed that, under the bilateral protocol setting
up the centres, women, children and the 'fragile' would not be
taken to Albania after being rescued by Italian vessels.
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