CEI slams Italy-Albania migrant deal

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 15 - The Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) on Thursday slammed the Italy-Albania accord for Rome to set up Italian-run migrant centres across the Adriatic saying that Italy was pretending to stop a phenomenon that was instead growing year by year.
    "Today the Senate approved the Albania-Italy agreement for the detention of migrants that the Coast Guard will save at sea, after 673 million euro in ten years up in smoke due to the inability to build a widespread reception system in our country, which ranks 16th in Europe in the reception of asylum seekers compared to the number of inhabitants", said Msgr. Gian Carlo Perego, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference's Commission for Migration and Migrantes.
    He said the 673 million euro had been really 'thrown into the sea due to the inability to govern a phenomenon, that of forced migration, which we pretend to block, but which is growing year by year".
    photo: CEI chief Cardinal Matteo Zuppi with Premier Giorgia Meloni and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (ANSA).