LONDON: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will on Thursday become the first British premier to visit Albania with talks on cracking down on irregular migrants set to top the agenda.
Starmer's two-day visit to the southeast European nation will seek to “step up efforts to break the crime web fuelling illegal migration across the Western Balkans”, his office said.
The UK prime minister is under pressure to cut the number of irregular migrants arriving on UK shores, many in small boats, amid the rising popularity of the hard-right, anti-immigrant Reform Party.
Starmer will visit the Port of Durres, the country's largest seaport, to see firsthand efforts to intercept people smugglers.
“Global challenges need shared solutions, and the work the UK and Albania is (sic) doing together is delivering security for working people in both countries,“ Starmer said in a statement.
In a deal between the previous Conservative government and Tirana in 2022, Albanians arriving in the UK on small boats across the Channel can be sent back immediately.
Starmer's Downing Street office said in a statement Thursday there had been a 95 percent reduction in Albanian small boat arrivals in the last three years, while the number of Albanians returned to the country had doubled in the past two years.
Some 5,294 Albanians were sent back in 2024, more than double the 2,035 Albanian nationals returned two years earlier.
'Tackle illicit finance'
Starmer is due to announce an expansion of the Joint Migration Taskforce in the Western Balkans, set up with Albania and Kosovo, to include North Macedonia and Montenegro.
This will allow greater intelligence sharing to “intercept smuggling gangs and deploy UK funded drones to snare gangsters funnelling migrants through the Western Balkans corridor and on to the UK,“ his office said.
The UK and Albania will also launch a new project “to tackle illicit finance and investigate underground finance streams that are laundering money” between the two countries.
The visit comes just after Albania Prime Minister Edi Rama secured his fourth term in office by leading his Socialist Party to victory in weekend parliamentary elections.
Rama has vowed to integrate the Balkan nation into the European Union, and is also set to meet EU chiefs Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa on Thursday in the capital Tirana.
They and Starmer are in Albania for a Friday gathering of the European Political Community -- a twice-yearly strategic forum bringing together 47 countries from inside and outside the EU.
In March the European Commission unveiled a planned reform of the 27-nation bloc's return system, which opened the way for member states to set up migrant return centres outside the EU.
Under the new Labour government, Britain abandoned a scheme to deport undocumented migrants to Rwanda.
Separate plans by Italy for Italian-run facilities to process migrants to be based in Albania are bogged down in the courts.
