ROME (Reuters) -The migrant detention hub Italy has set up in Albania has cost seven times more than an equivalent facility back home, a study by the ActionAid Italy charity and the University of Bari said on Thursday.
The Italian interior ministry declined to comment on the report.
Conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sees the facilities set up in Albania as a cornerstone of her tough immigration policies, and other European countries have looked to them as a possible model.
The scheme was launched last year but almost immediately put on hold as Italian courts repeatedly ordered the return to Italy of migrants picked up at sea and taken to Albania, citing issues with European Union law. The bloc’s top court has yet to give its opinion on the issue.
According to the report, Italy’s government awarded contracts worth 74.2 million euros ($87 million) to build the Albanian detention facilities. It spent more than 153,000 euros for each operational bed space in Albania, the report estimated.
By comparison, an asylum seekers’ detention facility in Sicily’s Porto Empedocle cost around 1 million euros for 50 operational bed spaces, or just over 21,000 euros per bed, ActionAid and the University of Bari found.
“The Albania operation stands out as the most expensive, inhumane, and ineffective measure in the history of Italian migration policy,” their report said.
It also reported that Italy last year paid some 570,000 euros ($670,000) to a cooperative that runs the Albanian centre, despite it being operational for just five days to host a total of 20 migrants.
In response to judicial opposition, this year Meloni’s government said it would turn the Albanian hub into a repatriation facility for failed asylum seekers expelled from Italy, rather than a holding centre for migrants rescued in the Mediterranean.
Italy’s main opposition force, the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), seized on Thursday’s report to denounce a waste of public resources.
“Giorgia Meloni must apologise to Italians, because the figures regarding the costs of her illegal Albania operation are an insult even to the millions of people who are currently struggling to get by,” said PD leader Elly Schlein.
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(Reporting by Angelo Amante and Alvise Armellini, editing by Keith Weir and Toby Chopra)
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