British immigrants, towards Albania?/ Starmer: Interested to see how the Rama-Meloni agreement will work

2024-09-15 12:52:00, Aktualitet CNA

British immigrants, towards Albania?/ Starmer: Interested to see how the

Prime Minister of Great Britain, Keir Starmer

The Prime Minister of Great Britain, Keir Starmer, has left open the possibility of sending immigrants to Albania instead of sending them to Rwanda, saying that he is "interested" in a similar agreement, as the Italian government has reached with the Albanian government. .

Meloni and Rama reached an agreement last year to open two immigrant "processing" centers, where it is claimed that 36,000 immigrants will be "processed" each year. The first of the migrant centers will open this fall after several months of delay.

Sir Keir said he was "interested" to see how the scheme would work and said he wanted to discuss Meloni's "strong views" on immigration and how they could help the UK deal with its crisis of small ships.

Over the past year, the number of illegal immigrants arriving in Italy has fallen from 118,000 to 44,500, a drop of 62 percent.

The British Prime Minister's positive comments about Albania come despite his party's decision to scrap the Conservatives' scheme to send migrants to Rwanda.

Under Italy's scheme, migrants whose asylum claims are rejected will be returned to their home country, while those accepted will be accepted in Italy. Under Rwanda's scheme, immigrants would be deported there.

The Prime Minister made his comments during a trip to Washington to meet US President Joe Biden.

He flew from Washington DC to Rome to meet Melon for the second time since his election victory.

Asked about the Albanian scheme, Keir Starmer said: "Let's see. It's early days, I'm interested in how this works, I think everyone else is."

He said he had already had a preliminary discussion with Meloni about "how we can work together on irregular immigration".

"She certainly has some strong ideas and I look forward to discussing them with her," he said.

"She and I have already discussed how we can improve joint operations, so that is something we will discuss," he stressed.

Italy has managed to reduce the number of immigrants thanks to financial agreements with the Tunisian and Libyan governments. Migrant crossings from Tunisia to Italy have fallen by 80 per cent in the past 12 months and there has been a 27 per cent drop in the number arriving from Libya over the same period.

The trip to Rome is the latest in a series of visits to European capitals as he seeks to forge closer cooperation on tackling illegal immigration and his efforts for a broader reset of relations with the EU.

More than 23,000 migrants have arrived in the UK in small boats so far this year, about the same as at this time last year./ CNA