“Italy and Albania are historically friendly nations, which are used to collaborating together and I want to thank Prime Minister Rama and the Albanian people once again for offering their help and having signed a wide-ranging European agreement with us.”
The prime minister said it Giorgia Meloni during joint statements with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama after visiting the migrant hotspot in Shengjin, Albania.
“I want to express solidarity with Albania and its people, for the denigratory campaign against Albania, painted as a narco-state governed by organized crime: it is not the first time that Albania offers its help to Italy, but in all other cases it was described as a nation with a sincere desire to be part of the common European home”https://gazzettadelsud.it/articoli/politica/2024/06/05/giorgia-meloni-in-albania-i- two-centres-for-migrants-operational-since-August-schlein-an-electoral-spottone-5e195a48-bed6-4d4d-9564-fbe5f5ced405/.”I remember the last time – he added -, when in the most dramatic days of During the Covid emergency, the Albanian government courageously sent 30 doctors and nurses to Lombardy, the epicenter of the infection. On that occasion Rama was praised and thanked”.
“The agreement could be replicable in many countries, it could become part of the structural solution of the European Union. We understand it and the supporters of uncontrolled immigration who contest it understand it. We have many eyes on us, we want to succeed. An objective of this kind is worth two months of delay, linked to the nature of the Gjader terrain which we had not foreseen and which required strengthening interventions”.
“We are not spending additional resources but we are making an investment,” Meloni explained talking about the two migrant centers in Albania. The protocol provides for expenses of “670 million euros for 5 years, 134 million per year” which, he added, “correspond to 7.5% of the expenses related to the reception of migrants on the national territory: these resources are not to be considered an additional cost. Migrants brought here to Albania would everywhere have to be taken to Italy, where they are expensive. The most useful element of this project is that it can represent an extraordinary tool of deterrence for those who want to reach Europe irregularly, and of contrast. to traffickers. And this means leading to cost containment.”
“The two structures” for migrants in Albania “must work together, they will be ready from August 1st” and in that of Gjader “we are starting from more than a thousand places currently, which will reach the 3 thousand envisaged by the protocol”.
“Do you know how much money I would have liked to put on healthcare? The 17 billion euros that went into superbonus scams, money taken away from the sick and given to scammers – the Prime Minister of Albania also said -: they were spent not to solve problems but thrown away by window”, said the Prime Minister in response to a question on the criticisms of the opposition, according to which she should have directed the costs of the Protocol with Albania on migrants to the Health Department. “If I had had the 17 billion in scams estimated to date, I would have gladly placed them on healthcare. Unfortunately they were thrown away to give them away, with poorly written rules, to people who wanted to defraud the state.”
Schlein, Meloni in Albania for an electoral commercial
The pact with Albania on migrants is “an enormous waste of money for a project that tramples on people's rights, prolongs the suffering of those who are rescued at sea by unloading people like barrels and parcels on Albanian territory. In my opinion it is contrary to what the constitution provides. It is a cynical agreement.” Meloni's trip is “an electoral stunt that costs 800 million that we could have spent on public health”. The secretary of the Democratic Party Elly Schlein said this to Corriere.it