Italy: NGOs call for suspension of Italy-Albania agreement

Rome: NGOs that form part of Italy’s national asylum and immigration coalition (TAI) have criticized the transfer of 132 migrants to Albania. These transfers were made without written provision, claims a new report from TAI filed in the Italian Parliament. They are calling on the parliament to suspend the agreement.

Italy’s Asylum and Immigration Table (T.A.I), — the country’s principle national asylum and immigration coalition to discuss migration matters — has criticized the Italian government for allegedly transferring 132 migrants to Albania with no written provision stating the reasons for their transfer.

TAI’s report was filed on July 29 in the Italian Parliament’s lower chamber. In the report, entitled ‘Border Wounds,’ the organization stated that “transfers from Italian pre-removal detention centers (CPRs) to Albania’s Gjader facility, a total of 132 until now, have been taking place systematically without a written and motivated provision. Both in the case of the first forced transfer of 41 persons on April 11, 2025, and on subsequent transfers, the Asylum and Immigration Table has verified the absence of a written and motivated order, either individual or collective.”

According to the report’s authors, “all the persons interviewed by TAI [during a monitoring visit in Gjader] claimed they were taken from Italian CPRs [often at night and without warning], they were handcuffed with cable ties and with no indication of the destination they were being taken to [in the majority of cases], or they were told they were being taken to CPRs in Bari or Brindisi as the final destination.”

TAI has branded this type of transfer “illegitimate” since the people were being transferred to a “non-existent CPR [the Gjader facility is not officially a CPR] to non-EU territory, and their transfer was lacking a motivation and thus contrary to constitutional principles.”

The report went on to claim that “in the cases that were analyzed it is evident that coercive measures were used in a completely arbitrary way that violate the current norms.”

The report further states that “the lack of transparency that concerns the ‘Albanian model’ is not accidental but rather intended by the government. The information blackout is functional to reduce the possibility for civil society to speak with knowledge of the events.”

During the presentation, the representatives of some organizations which are part of TAI and who drafted the report spoke about “numerous critical issues regarding health management that already existed in Italy but that are amplified and made worse in Albania.”

The coalition called on the Italian parliament to “suspend immediately…the implementation of the Italy-Albania protocol, regarding the forced transfer to Albania of foreign citizens subject to repatriation.”

The reasons for the suspension call, TAI says, are because of “serious issues uncovered at the Gjader facilitiy,” as well as “for judicial reasons.”

More than 40 organizations that form part of TAI stressed during the presentation of their report that they “call for the closing of Gjader, these centers must be closed, they are useless and inhumane.”