Investigation Into Italy-Albania Migration Detention Facility Wins Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize For Journalism
An investigative report into Italy building a detention facility and asylum processing centre on Albanian territory just won the 2026 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism.
The story, which was investigated and published by Giacomo Zandonini and Maite Vermeulen for De Correspondent, tracks how a €259 million deal was struck between Italy and Albania to detain over 250 people in the latter country.
The report is called ‘Locking migrants in a cage in Albania: Italy does it, the Netherlands wants to’, and it reportedly took 18 months to investigate.
‘Migrants on their way to the European Union, or rather: migrants who have already reached the European Union’, it explains. ‘The cage in Albania is ‘Italian territory’: it was paid for and built on behalf of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.’
The deal is outlined in 9 chapters in the report, showing how the deal is being described by both ‘friends and foes’ as a ‘model’ that is ‘impossible for the outside world to actually see that model.’
‘These are detentions in legal limbo, so complex that even lawyers do not understand them, in places out of public view, where people are held in violation of European law, under the guise of a fair asylum procedure.’
#MaltaDaily
