Italy's Albania plan explained: Could it work in Britain?

Last year, Rome and Tirana agreed to set up centres in Albania where Italy-bound migrants would be registered and then wait for their asylum claims to be processed by Italian officials.

Italy also has an agreement with the UN-backed Libyan government in which Italy trains and funds the coastguard to intercept migrant boats.

Speaking after talks in Rome, Starmer has not ruled out a similar scheme in the UK and said he would employ “British pragmatism” when it comes to solving the small boats crisis.

UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper also confirmed on Monday that the UK is looking at an Italian-style asylum processing scheme in Albania as the prime minister seeks to prevent more small boat crossings across the English Channel.

Before the prime minister’s trip, No 10 praised Meloni and said he would discuss her country’s success in slashing boat crossings by 60 per cent over the past year.

Initially, Albania’s migrant deal with Italy drew criticism from human rights groups who highlighted human rights issues, legal problems, and high costs.

Hitting back at the critics, the right-wing Italian prime minister said: “Migrants will have the same treatment that they would have had in Lampedusa or other Italian centres, just not on Italian soil.

“You can’t argue that what is being done in Albania violates human and migrant rights.”

The plan has also sparked interest from some right-of-centre-European governments with the centre-right European People’s Party making it part of its elections platform for the June elections to the European parliament.

But the hopes of some EU capitals of replicating Italy’s move with Albania may be dashed after Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said it was a “one-off” deal.

Rama also said that other governments had approached him to see if they could replicate the arrangement with Italy.

"I said no. Because it doesn’t make sense to me. Italy is very special to us, more than a strategic relation. It’s a very deeply rooted friendship,” he said.

Italy has a highly asymmetric relationship with Albania and Libya, while the UK does not share a similar relationship with France or the EU making it difficult to replicate Italy's plan.

France nor the EU want to be recipients of migrants deported from the UK and the UK cannot leverage its relationship with either to start conducting pull back operations.

Furthermore, it is difficult to intercept small boats in the channel and tow them somewhere else and removing people who have already arrived, detaining them and forcing them on a plane is hard and expensive.

The previous UK government's Rwanda plan, which was scrapped by Labour, is also not the same as Italy's plan with Albania.

The Rwanda plan was to remove migrants after they arrived in the UK and then export them to Rwanda permanently and only claim asylum in the central African country.

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Rama also recalled when former prime minister Boris Johnson contacted him to try and get Albania’s help with immigrants.

“Boris Johnson called me and said, I praise your leadership, let’s do something together.

“Let’s have an agreement that Britain will bring to Albania the illegal immigrants to keep them there, to process. I said, sorry, this is not possible,” Rama recalled.

The Italian deal is to house up to 3,000 people at a time, while the UK offer was “not a fixed number.”

Rama concluded: “It was about everyone that comes to Britain...like a transit. I said there’s no way. Then, we had others I’m not going to mention. Among the richest countries in Europe.”

A global charity led by David Miliband has warned that the UK should drop its pursuit of Italy’s “costly and ultimately ineffective” policies if they want to put an end to people dying in the channel.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said that instead, the UK government should give refugees access to safe routes so they are not forced to make dangerous crossings.

Khusbu Patel, the acting executive director of the IRC UK, said: “Today’s discussions in Italy take place after a weekend that saw at least eight lives lost in the Channel, just days after the deadliest crossing this year.

“These tragic incidents serve as a reminder that instead of prioritising costly and ultimately ineffective deterrence policies, the new government should focus on solutions that work, such as scaling up safe routes and investing in our asylum system.”