Refugee camp, Albania in race with Ukraine

Albania will most likely be hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, stranded on the new Balkan Route starting from Turkey and ending in Austria.

The Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz's idea of building a large refugee camp in a non-European European state has found a reflection in the world media alluding that Albania is in a strong race with Ukraine to receive millions of euros in support from over 15 European states in order to realise this plan within this year.

The main player of this idea is Danish Prime Minister Lars Locke Rasmussen, who sees it as the only solution already that refugee relocation in Europe failed because states like Hungary or Poland, Cheekia, Slovakia and Baltic states did not accept widow quotas and refugees cannot return to Syria or North Africa. In Albania or Ukraine refugees must wait for the decision on asylum demand submitted to the EU.

Rasmussen said the European state where this camp will be established will not be one preferred for asylum by immigrants and which is part of the list of safe states. Without a positive decision, no immigrant should be able to enter the EU in the future. Those immigrants still found in the EU will return to this centre as well. The danger is that refugees with a negative decision will probably remain at the site of this camp, where temporary protection would be offered. As third safe states, former Yugoslavia and Albania are recognised by the EU.

The issue of the establishment of the large refugee camp will be discussed by Chancellor Kurz in Berlin on June 12th with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU), who, like Kurz, represents a harsh stand against refugees.

While Europeans discuss where the remaining refugee camp in the Balkans and Western Europe will be built, Turkey suspended its bilateral readmission agreement with Greece as an answer to the Greek court's decision to free eight former Turkish soldiers accused by Erdogan of being involved in the July 2016 coup.

This agreement with Greece constituted the legal axis of the agreement on refugees between Turkey and the EU, which was brokered on March 18th 2016, with the aim of halting the flow of irregular immigrants from Turkey to Greek islands. The agreement was meant for any Syrian immigrant returning to Turkey from the Greek islands, a Syrian in Turkey, to be restored to the EU. This new situation says that 13.5 million citizens from Syria, whose population is 20 million, are in need of humanitarian aid. About 4.9 million Syrians have found solutions in this period by going to neighboring countries.

The Balkan road officially closed in 2016 has moved south. Greece is only the starting point of the new refugee stream in what is now called the “road of Albania”.