Externalized Asylum Processing, So-Called Safe Countries, and the Uncertain Future of the Italy-Albania Protocol

Guest post by Eleanor Paynter. Eleanor is Assistant Professor of Italian, Migration, and Global Media Studies at the University of Oregon. She studies displacement, asylum, and migrant testimony and is the author of Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present (University of California Press, 2024). Find her on BlueSky @eleanorbpaynter.net.

Last fall was supposed to herald a new era for Italian migration management. In October 2024, after months of delays, Giorgia Meloni’s administration opened two detention centers in Albania, a move eyed with enthusiasm across Europe, from EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Italian leaders claimed that the structures – built to process asylum seekers from so-called “safe countries” who are rescued or apprehended in international waters – would boost efficiency in processing migrants and function as deterrence mechanisms, prompting would-be migrants to reconsider their departure. 

But more swiftly than they opened, the centers were effectively shut down. In October and again in November, Italian authorities sent groups of Egyptian and Bangladeshi migrants (16, then 8) to the northern coastal city of Shëngjin, only to have judges in Rome halt the process and insist that the men be returned to Italy. The judges questioned whether Egypt and Bangladesh can be considered comprehensively safe, citing a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice (CJEU) stipulating that “the criteria for designating a third country as a safe country of origin must be met throughout its territory.” Meloni and allies retaliated by passing a law that formally recognizes Italy’s list, which currently includes 19 countries, insisting that governments, not courts, determine which countries are safe. But following the November returns, staff were recalled to Italy.

The structures now sit empty – "like a ghost town." Their fate ostensibly rests in the hands of the CJEU, with a decision likely in April. Yet Meloni insists on their reopening, as she reiterated in a press conference on January 9. She claims that a ruling by Italy’s highest court favors her administration’s position. Legal experts dispute this interpretation, clarifying that judges can question the legitimacy of “safe country” determinations put forward by the government. A final decision in the case in Italy is on hold, pending the CJEU decision. Whether or not the centers become operational, their fraught opening has renewed international attention to how “safe country” status is determined. The case also implicitly underscores how normalized border externalization and the criminalization of migration have become in public and political debate. 

Italy’s plan, as clarified in its ratification of the Albania agreement, is to send to Shëngjin male migrants not in in need of medical attention, who hail from “safe countries” (a stipulation authorities failed to uphold in the fall, when initial groups included several minors and people in need of immediate care). In the new detention centers, Italian officials would conduct expedited assessment of their asylum claims. These structures, staffed by Italians with Albanian guards providing external security, are meant to process up to 3,000 asylum seekers per month: first in a hotspot for identification and registration in Shëngjin; then in a structure in nearby Gjadër that can hold 880 asylum seekers, 144 deportees, and 20 people in a prison area. Most cases would presumably be swiftly rejected and claimants shifted to deportee/returnee status, given that the “safe country” stipulation already suggests they had no justifiable reason to flee to Europe.

Asylum officials regularly use country of origin reports to assess claims. That information can lead to denials or broad granting, as was the case for Syrians entering Germany in 2014-16. Safe country lists, instead, indicate countries which “generally do not generate protection needs for their people” or where “asylum seekers are protected and are not in danger,” according to the EU Agency for Asylum. Safe country designations affect who can claim asylum and who can be deported to countries newly recognized as safe, as Maja Janmyr and Nora Milch observe about Lebanon and Syria. In work on legal and political aspects of the safe country designation, Cathryn Costello notes that the concept has long prompted debate in Europe, citing discussion of Türkiye in 2016. When expedited review on this basis restricts or modifies established procedures, it risks violating “principles of effective protection of rights” and of non-refoulement.

The Italy-Albania Protocol takes swift review a step further, inscribing it into a form of border externalization by constructing centers just outside EU borders. Like the UK’s scrapped Rwanda plan and US initiatives to implement screening at the Guatemala-Mexico border, the Italy-Albania Protocol shifts claims processing into a third country territory. Such moves accompany the renewal of other externalization agreements and anti-trafficking narratives that fault smugglers, rather than restrictive laws and a lack of humanitarian corridors, as Diana Volpe recently discussed. These approaches continue to gain ground: Von der Leyen has cited the Protocol as a potential model for development of “return hubs outside the EU.” She has also praised Italian and EU collaboration with Libyan and Tunisian authorities without addressing human rights abuses documented in both countries and partially funded by those EU agreements. 

Critics of the Protocol cite potential rights violations, including automatic detention, and emphasize that the centers are unlikely to stop people from migrating. What Meloni touts as efficient effectively delays and potentially prevents people from exercising the right to claim asylum or accessing necessary aid. Budget is another point of concern. The €670 million that Italy has committed for the five-year agreement doesn’t include associated and seemingly unanticipated costs like Navy transport to and from Shëngjin. Journalists and humanitarian groups question Interior Minister Piantedosi’s claim that Adriatic crossings cost around €8,500, estimating instead that fuel alone surpasses €25,000 per voyage.

In addition, the Interior Ministry initially opened centers without having finalized its agreement with Medihospes, the Bari-based cooperative awarded the €133 million contract for operating the centers. Cooperatives running reception centers in Italy know these delays well; in my own research at Italian reception structures, I regularly heard about the challenges of operating with delayed or limited funding. Contractual issues in such a high-profile set-up thus turn attention to financial and logistical management within Italy, as well. 

The Italy-Albania collaboration highlights further issues: first, the longer histories that undergird what often gets described as a sudden, unforeseen “crisis.” The return of migrants from Albania to Bari bears ironic echoes of Albanian arrivals to Italy's Puglia region in the 1990s, including 20,000 Albanians who reached Bari on the Vlora ship on August 8, 1991. Rather than reminding publics of the continuity of migration and of emergency discourses, images of that arrival are still sometimes miscited as representing today’s Mediterranean arrivals. Albanian Prime Minister Rama, however, claims the country is indebted to Italy for what he terms its hospitality for Albanians who fled there. Albania now has much to gain from its collaboration with Italy: an EU candidate country for the last decade, it aims to formally attain member-state status in 2030 – an ambitious plan, as Rama recently stated, but one potentially bolstered by cooperation in EU border control measures. 

The centers also figure in nationalist rhetoric and the politicization of migration beyond Europe. Elon Musk shone a global spotlight on the centers by questioning judges’ authority, tweeting, "Do the people of Italy live in a democracy or does an unelected autocracy make the decisions?" His provocation reframes questions of migrant rights as a matter of Italian rights and nationalism just as, in Europe like the US, attention is on borders and deportations. Italian President Sergio Mattarella suggested Musk stay out of Italian politics, but that may be difficult to enforce in a moment when billionaires are bolstering far-right parties. 

The shift of the debate from whether the EU should have external processing centers, to which lists it uses to run them, speaks to the normalization of practices that not so long ago were hotly debated among EU leaders themselves. Enthusiasm for both border externalization and “safe country” lists ultimately reflects what I have described as the failures of empathy: after a decade of reports about migrants imprisoned and tortured in Libya, after regular coverage of shipwrecks and drownings, and even after films like 2024 Oscar contender Io Capitano have brought stories of precarious migration to global publics, the push to curb access to asylum, tighten borders, and deport migrants has significant momentum.