The case was brought by two Bangladeshis who were rescued at sea and brought to an Italian detention center in Albania. They challenged the rejection of their asylum application, arguing that Bangladesh is not safe, contrary to its designation on Italy’s list of safe countries.

Friday’s ruling impacts Italy’s so-called Albania model. In 2023, Meloni struck a deal with Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to detain and process the asylum claims of up to 30,000 migrants intercepted in the Mediterranean, building two facilities in Albania.

However, the plan has faced repeated setbacks in Italian courts.

Judges refused to validate the detention of the first three groups of asylum-seekers transferred to Albania in October and November 2024, and February, citing a CJEU ruling from October that said the criteria for designating a third country as a safe country of origin must be met throughout its territory. In those cases, Bangladesh and Egypt were not considered fully safe across all regions or for all groups of people.

In an attempt to bypass this legal obstacle, the Italian government issued a decree in December listing 19 countries, including Bangladesh and Egypt, as “safe” for repatriation.

This survey goes beyond domestic dilemmas or voting intentions. Taking a closer look at emerging and established trends within European societies between 2019 and 2024, it examines what shapes the bloc’s social agenda today, citizen concerns about European and international issues, leadership expectations, and opinions about leading global figures. On question after question, responses reveal a strong undercurrent of fear impacting voting behaviour just days before June’s European elections, emanating from four critical realities.

Rising cost of living is the foremost concern for Europeans heading to the polls.

Fear cause No.1: Economic uncertainty

Rising cost of living is the foremost concern for Europeans heading to the polls. Inflation shocks that have stunned European economies during the post-pandemic period established a deep-rooted unease about people’s ability to make ends meet. Asked about issues that worry them most when thinking of today’s Europe, respondents, at an average of 47 percent , place “rising cost of living” as their top concern. The issue has become remarkably salient in countries like France (58 percent), Greece (55 percent), Romania (54 percent), Spain (49 percent), and Bulgaria (44 percent), yet, still, in the rest of the surveyed member countries the cost of living ends up among the top three causes of concern. This wide sense of economic uncertainty is further spurred by a lingering feeling of unfairness when it comes to the distribution of wealth: M ore than eight out of 10 (81 percent overall) sense that “in Europe, the rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer”.

via Kapa Research

Anxiety transforms into fear when one realizes that the main political conflict has little to do with competing economic solutions to high living costs. Instead, it is more of a clash between systemic forces and extremists, primarily centred on the field of immigration and the perceived threat to the European way of life.

Fear cause No.2: Immigration

On the cultural front, since 2015, immigration in Europe has been a complex and multifaceted issue, with humanitarian and political implications. In our survey, immigration appears to be the second most important citizen concern with 37 percent (on average), while, at the same time, on the question of which areas should Europe focus on the next five years, calls for “stricter immigration control” are prevalent, with 36 percent of respondents across all surveyed countries ranking it as a top priority. This is notably evident in Germany (56 percent), in spite of its reputation as a welcoming country early in the migration crisis, and in Italy (40 percent), a hub-country into Europe for migrants and refugees. More importantly, the perception of immigration as a “threat to public order” is widespread, with 68 percent of respondents holding this view, compared to only 23 percent who see it as an “opportunity for a new workforce”.

The proposal has run into problems already with Poland and diplomats from Europe’s eastern half venting about the payments.

Meanwhile, many dug-in fights over migration policy are unresolved days before diplomats hoped to clinch the long-in-the-works pact. Southern countries are haggling over how many asylum seekers they can redistribute north and east, while those regions are pressing their southern neighbors to do more to prevent migrants from relocating without permission within the EU.

It means the process is at risk of falling apart or facing further delays, raising the prospect that the EU could, once again, fail at solving one of its most vexing challenges.

“If the Council fails to grab the momentum, a common policy will disappear over the horizon, possibly for good, leaving us with the chaotic status quo that is not working for anyone,” said Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Dutch European Parliament member with the centrist Renew Europe group.

The moment of truth

Migration discussions are set to dominate the upcoming week in Brussels. The Council is aiming to wrap up its own negotiations by Wednesday before handing its work off to government ministers overseeing migration. They are set to convene in Luxembourg for a meeting on Thursday.

The building is a reception center for migrants, one of two sites Italy built in Albania as part of a migration pact announced in November 2023 between Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Albania’s Prime Minister Edi Rama.

Italian authorities plan to bring migrants rescued at sea to Shengjin, screening and identifying them. Italy would then transport these migrants about 15 miles north to Gjader, a former Albanian air base. Here, they would await the processing of their asylum claims, adjudicated through a screen by officials based in Rome.

Italy says no vulnerable people would be brought to Albania — no children, no families, no pregnant women, no elderly. Instead, the facility in Gjader would host single men from places Italy has deemed safe, countries such as Tunisia and Egypt. This way, Italy can apply its expedited border procedures: an asylum claim assessed in no more than 28 days. As the self-fulfilling logic goes, these individuals are unlikely to be at risk of persecution because they are from a country Italy considers safe, and so these cases can move more rapidly. If their claims are rejected, they could be held longer while Italy finds a way to repatriate them.

The deal is supposed to cost 650 million euros ($723 million) over five years, with more than a quarter — 252 million euros — reserved for the cost of official travel, an expense that would have been unnecessary if these facilities had been in Italy, according to analysis from Italian watchdog Fondazione Openpolis.

A year after the deal was struck, and with both facilities constructed and staffed, the entire scheme is in question. Italian authorities began bringing people to Albania in mid-October. By mid-November, fewer than 25 migrants had been processed there, all believed to be from Egypt and Bangladesh. But the Italian courts have ordered them all released and transferred to Italy.

Italy’s Meloni has vowed the plan will work and has blamed judges for stymieing her efforts and those of her right-wing Brothers of Italy party to curb what they call irregular migration, people who flee via boats from the edge of North Africa to the nearest slip of Europe. In 2023, more than 157,000 migrants arrived in Italy by sea, according to Italy’s Interior Ministry. More than 3,100 migrants died or went missing on routes to Europe via the Mediterranean Sea, though many more drownings and disappearances likely go unrecorded. The Meloni government has frustrated rescue efforts, including by detaining rescue ships operated by nongovernmental organizations or directing them to distant ports and stalling their disembarkment. Italy says this is an effort to stop human smuggling, a very real threat along migrant routes but one unaddressed by these crackdowns.

As part of this broader anti-immigrant project, Meloni looked to Albania, a small country outside the EU with its own complex history of migration, to test a theory of deterrence: If migrants believe they will never set foot on European soil, they will not seek to come at all. “They do not want the people to leave. They want people to know that if they try to reach Italy, in fact, they will be locked up in Albania,” said Elisa De Pieri, a researcher with Amnesty International. “This is in line with the hardening of the borders all around the European Union.”

To achieve this, Italy created a fictional border zone in Albania, a kind of liminal space for migrants — Italian territory, but only for those who have not yet stepped foot on Italian territory. From the moment migrants are brought aboard an Italian vessel, they are under the control and jurisdiction of Italian authorities. Italian police and officers guard the facilities. Italian officials review and adjudicate the asylum claims under the same procedures applied in Italy. This is what distinguishes the Italy-Albania deal from the U.K.-Rwanda pact, proposed by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whereby Britain would deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda for the authorities there to decide whether or not they merited protection or would be deported to a third country. Under Sunak’s arrangement, returning to Britain would not be an option in either case. “The Italians say: ‘No, we are not outsourcing. We are keeping the responsibility — but we just do it outside the territory,” said Andreina De Leo, a researcher at Maastricht University. Rome is trying to meet its international protection obligations but not in its backyard.

The Albanian government has granted this territory to Italy for five years: about 43,000 square feet in Shengjin and about 829,000 square feet in Gjader. Albania will provide security at the perimeters, acting as a de facto border guard.

According to the agreement, as many as 3,000 migrants could move through Albania each month and as many as 36,000 each year. That number exceeds the current capacity in Gjader: 880 places for asylum-seekers, a 144-person detention center and 20 spots in a penitentiary. Even Rama has dismissed Italy’s ambitions: “The 36,000 is a wishful-thinking number based on the consideration that the process will be such an anti-Italian process and will work like a Swiss clock,” the Albanian leader told the Atlantic Council in 2023, perhaps mocking Italy’s reputation for inefficiency.

Migration and human rights advocates fear the failures that plague Italy’s migration and detention system will be replicated and exacerbated in Albania. Independent monitors have widely documented rights violations for those seeking protection within Italy as well as the government’s shortcomings in providing basic needs and access to legal, translation and health services within existing migrant centers. Many of these issues are “destined to be reflected, like a mirror, on the structures in Albania but aggravated by distance and logistics,” said Massimiliano Bagaglini, who, until Oct. 1, headed the unit overseeing migrants for Italy’s independent national ombudsperson for the rights of persons deprived of liberty. Advocates worry that expedited asylum procedures will undermine due process or result in prolonged arbitrary detention and that those in Albania will struggle to access lawyers or even be aware they can challenge these malpractices. “A lot of things that do not work in Italy — how should they work from Albania?” said Judith Gleitze, head of the Sicily field office with the NGO Borderline-europe.

“It’s a mess, and it’s a lot of money going for nothing,” Gleitze added. “Only for this reputation of: ‘I’m closing the borders.’”

The intervention by Italian courts has de facto halted the Albania plan but only because judges are seeking guidance from the European Court of Justice on Italy’s specific procedures for migrants from these so-called safe countries and on whether Italy can detain them at all — on Italian territory, or its zones in Albania — as they await asylum processing. Italy’s Albania model is delayed but not yet defeated.

The Italian Prime Minister’s office and the Ministry of the Interior did not return multiple requests for comment, though New Lines spoke with Italian officials in Albania in October, including those managing the centers. All refused to use their names on record. The Albanian Ministry of Interior and Foreign Ministry also did not return multiple requests for comment.

In late August, when Marashi, the port director, offered his tour, the facility in Shengjing was quiet, just a couple of cars and a bus parked outside, all with EU license plates. He still insisted on keeping a distance from the compound. They do not like for anyone to get too close.

“Even here,” Marashi said earlier that day, sitting at his desk in his office, “the director of the port cannot go inside facilities there.”

When Meloni and Rama announced the pact, it surprised many in their respective governments and the EU. Other countries had explored hosting asylum-seekers in Albania, which sits along the Western Balkans route that migrants use to reach Western Europe. These plans fell through because they proved impractical, logistically or politically. “Albania will never be a country where very rich countries will set up camps for their refugees,” Rama told an Albanian outlet in 2021 after talks with the U.K. leaked.

But Rama and Meloni sold this as an act of solidarity. Rama said Albania owed Italy for taking in Albanians who fled in the years after the tumultuous end of communist rule in 1991. This is the official public line. In private, people bristle at this propaganda.

Economic collapse and insecurity in Albania forced thousands to risk crossing to Italy by boat. In August 1991, about 20,000 refugees on the ship Vlora reached the Italian port city of Bari. They were housed in a soccer stadium where Italian authorities air-dropped supplies. Italy returned most to Albania. Throughout the decade, Albanians arrived in Italy, settled and received legal status. But Italy also guarded the sea heavily and turned back the boats.

The story about international amity also smooths out the realpolitik of the situation: Albania wants to increase its clout in Europe and perhaps boost its own EU prospects. “Deep down, the Albanian government understands that doing deals or being involved in the migration crisis of Europe makes them an important player in European politics,” said Andi Hoxhaj, a lecturer in law at King’s College London. “They understand, by hosting this, they will become an important voice — or at least have a good seat at the table.”

The scheme received limited pushback in Albania. The Albanian parliament approved it in February. The political opposition contested it in court, backed by human rights groups, but the Albanian Constitutional Court narrowly affirmed its legality. (The Italian parliament ratified the deal in January, despite objections from opposition members.)

Arilda Lleshi is a 28-year-old activist from Lezhe, the province of both Shengjin and Gjader. She organized protests against the migration pact in Lezhe and another in Tirana. Both were small, attracting about 30 demonstrators. In Tirana, mostly young people attended, worried about human rights. “People were not gathering in the streets,” she said. “With 30 people, you cannot change big deals like this.”

In Lezhe, mostly old people showed up because, Lleshi said, they are the only ones left. Albania is a country of fewer than 3 million; since 1991, nearly 40% of the population has left the country, many in search of work. According to Albanian census data from 2022, Lezhe province had 115,000 residents, a decline of 15% over a decade. Outside the main cities, the province is sparsely populated, disconnected from the economy and infrastructure, the kind of emptied-out place where a government agrees to build a migrant center without consulting with the people who live next to it. “The community was not asked at all about it,” Lleshi said. “They simply pressured them to stay quiet.” Lleshi said she believes her mother was fired from her job as a librarian by city officials because of her organizing around the migrant center. A complaint on her mother’s dismissal is pending with Albania’s commissioner for protection from discrimination.

Inside, the Shengjin facility forms a square around a tennis-green pavement. The white doors that surround it each lead to a part of the migration bureaucracy: registration, medical screening, biometrics and identification. The spaces have the sterile, slightly chemical smell of unused places: bright blue plastic chairs never sat in, gurneys wrapped in plastic, an empty refrigerator with its doors splayed open.

In early October, an Italian official described this facility as a kind of relief center, where migrants will get a meal, treatment for minor injuries, fresh clothing, a hot shower and the chance to apply for asylum, if they wish. He said this as people stood around in the compound in police uniforms and military fatigues. The first arrivals were expected in days. The Italian naval vessel, the Libra, moored in Shengjin on Oct. 16 with 16 passengers.

Only migrants that Italy rescues in international waters can be brought to Albania. On the high seas, they are outside Italian territory and outside the scope of EU asylum rules.

These rescues are often precarious, involving crowded, rickety boats. People are exhausted, traumatized and without any identification documents.

But Italy must decide who goes to Albania — single men, mostly, from safe countries — and who cannot. Italian officials say they will conduct a preliminary screening on a “hub ship,” where Italy will separate the vulnerable, who will be brought to Italy, from those destined for Albania. Italian officials declined to offer specifics on how the hub ships operate.

De Pieri, of Amnesty International, said she is concerned this will keep people at sea much longer, in contravention of human rights law. Advocates also worry people will be brought to Albania who should not be. This has already happened. Of the first 16 to arrive in Shengjin, authorities brought four people to Italy after screening found at least two were minors. Two others were deemed vulnerable.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) agreed in August to monitor these hub ships, along with the two sites in Albania, for an initial period of three months. These officers themselves cannot identify vulnerabilities, but they can report what they see to Italian authorities.

Through a freedom of information request, the Italian magazine Altreconomia obtained the tender for the Italian service provider for the Albanian facilities, in both Shengjin and Gjader. It specifically includes services for migrants that should not be sent to Albania; these range from clowns and story time for children to interventions for human trafficking victims. Medihospes, the provider, did not return a request for comment. An Italian official insisted no such people would be in Albania. He suggested the tender might have been an oversight.

There is only one route connecting Shenghin to Gjader, a two-lane road that can crawl with midday traffic out of the port town. But once far enough out, the jam clears and it’s an open road flanked by mountains and small farmlands. Round a curve, and the Gjader facility appears, a roadside metal fortress.

In August, its security perimeter had not yet been fully erected, and laborers were fitting together prefabricated buildings in the relentless afternoon heat. The only shade came from the structures themselves, casting half-shadows in the sun. These containers, lined up, stretched to what seemed like the length of a football field. Some were fully built. Others were boxes with holes for windows and doors. Pallets in plastic sheeting and metal brackets and half-drunk plastic water bottles littered the site, a detention center assembly kit spilled out in an open lot. A laborer in sunglasses and a bucket hat was working on one of the containers. He spoke a little English. He did not give his name but said they were workers from Macedonia, on the project for about a month.

Two months later, Gjader was still unfinished, orange netting blocking off work zones. Yet it was ready enough for the first migrant arrivals. Janitorial staff, mostly women, rolled around cleaning carts, and Medihospes staffers in bright orange vests carried around a basket of keys, testing them in different doors.

The people brought here will be asylum-seekers from places Italy has deemed safe, a list that is more reflective of politics than the realities on the ground. In May 2024, Italy updated its list with 22 countries. It included Bangladesh, Egypt, Tunisia and Peru. Four out of five of these are the top nationalities who sought protection in Italy in 2023.

Italy is using this list to apply the expedited border procedures with a 28-day limit. The first 12 people housed in Albania had their cases heard — and rejected — in record time: 24 hours.

Speed is not inherently bad if backed up with sufficient staff and resources. The Territorial Commission in Rome will handle Albanian cases, but Italian officials declined to give details on the procedures. An Italian official in Gjader pointed to a row of little rooms, with a desk and a chair, where asylum-seekers would videoconference on their claims. “It’s just less time, which doesn’t make the examination less thorough,” said Gaia Romeo, a migration researcher at the Brussels School of Governance. But those who decide these cases “have a lot of pressure to make it work fast.”

“You cannot find vulnerabilities quickly. You need time. When you have expedited procedures, it’s less likely that hidden vulnerabilities are found.” Robust legal representation is even more urgent on a rapid timeline. Italy will assign representation, also remote. It will allow for on-site visits if remote representation is impossible — though it’s not clear, yet, what that threshold is. Giulia Crescini, a lawyer with the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration (ASGI), one of Italy’s leading migration law consortiums, wondered how effective any defense could be in these circumstances. “If you don’t have access to the internet, you arrived two days [ago] — it’s very difficult to know the name of a lawyer.”

Those denied protection will be deported. They will move to the repatriation center in Gjader. Here, the doors are reinforced metal. The windows have bars. Italian officials say they did not believe people would be here for more than three months, but they could not provide specifics and told New Lines to speak with migration lawyers, many of whom also have questions about how this would work in Albania.

Once people arrive in Italy, or anywhere else in Europe, it is very hard to send them home. Italy repatriated just over 3,000 people in the first seven months of 2024, a 20% increase from 2023, but only a fraction of total arrivals.

Successful repatriations are based on agreements between countries and the Italian government — not the government in Albania. “I don’t want to be cynical, but it’s like you are moving people from one shore to another. Because, of course, first of all, they cannot be repatriated from Albania, because the Albanian authorities are not responsible,” said Vincenzo Amendola, a Democratic Party legislator and former foreign minister. Italian officials insist this will not be the case and that they are finalizing deals with Albania to repatriate people from Albanian territory. But they offered no specifics about what those deals entailed, and none were completed the week before the first migrants arrived.

Those 12 migrants in Albania did not stay very long in Gjader. The Civil Court of Rome invalidated their detention. The judges cited a decision from the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the EU’s top court, which said member states could not declare countries “safe” if they included exceptions for specific regions. The Italian courts said this ECJ ruling was incompatible with Italy’s list of safe countries, many of which contained carve-outs for both territorial or categorical reasons — for example, LGBTQ+ people. The judges ordered those detained in Albania released and transferred to Italy, a costly and pointless detour.

Florinda’s shop in Gjader sells everything, including water, hair dye and jars of Nutella. Her parents ran the store in the 1970s, though her family did not own it until post-communist privatization in the 1990s. The village has one other store. Each has its own customers, and all of them are old. Florinda said she drove at night to Tirana, the capital more than an hour away, to purchase goods. She pointed to the crates of fresh peppers and plums and peaches. “They are still full. They’re going to stay like two or three days — and after that, they are going to rot.”

“After 11 a.m.,” she said, “there are no people anymore.”

In the 1970s, Florinda said, Gjader felt full. There were military officials and pilots and their families. People from nearby villages would walk or come by bike just to have a coffee. But this summer, at least, she noticed more people. Workers came in to buy things, mostly water and Cokes. Beyond that, she doesn’t have any information about the migrant center next door. “It’s not about asking us if they should do it or not,” she said. “Just give us the information.” It frustrated her because she hoped they would employ people from the village. People were saying it would pay well. Medihospes, the service provider, did advertise for local jobs, including “welcome ambassadors” in Shengjin, IT support staff in Gjader and bus drivers. Some paid as much as 1,300 euros ($1,350) per month, nearly double the average Albanian salary.

Albania’s role in Italy’s scheme is supposed to be that of a landlord, but it is not so straightforward. Amendola, the lawmaker, pointed out that Italy paid for infrastructure upgrades and public works projects in Albania — the water, electricity and internet to make it possible. The protocol provides Albania with 16.5 million euros ($17.1 million) up front. Amendola believes it will be more. Erida Skendaj, executive director of the Albanian Helsinki Committee, raised concerns about corruption in Albania’s public sector. “We cannot say that all this money will be spent with integrity.”

Skendaj, whose group backed the court challenge to the pact, said she worried about Albania’s role in rights violations. “We are complicit in the violations because Italy is violating human rights by managing this process in distance,” she told New Lines during an interview in her Tirana office this summer.

Albania’s Constitutional Court ruled in favor of the agreement, but it did not fully relinquish Albanian jurisdiction over these sites. The government still has a stake in certain cases — for example, if Italian authorities commit human rights abuses in Albania. It is not yet clear if Albanian human rights authorities will monitor these camps. In addition to the UNHCR’s temporary arrangement, Italy’s rights ombudspersons and lawmakers will retain access, but showing up unannounced will be challenging.

Among the residents of Gjader, the concern is not so much around migrants arriving but around those Albanians who keep leaving. If this facility offers a small lifeline to the community, they are open to taking it. Nikolin Ndoci, who owns a small bar, the Smile Cafe, was hopeful. “People may come back or other people will come,” he said of those who might find employment at the Gjader facility.

In the other shop, the store owner, who did not want to give her name, said her son left for Italy many years ago. The people coming to Gjader were the same as Albania’s children, emigrating for what she called “bread of the mouth” — to earn a life, to survive. They feel like her own son. Anyone who is a parent understands what migration means, she said.

In Shengjin, the port is set apart from the resort high-rises that line the seaside. There are still signs of its aspirations as a vacation town: motels and restaurants and roadside stands selling beach toys and inflatable rafts and giant jugs of water. About a minute’s walk from the port, there is a seafood restaurant, reopened in August. Inside, brightly painted portraits of Giorgia Meloni hang from the walls — old and young, blonde and brunette, and with every kind of exaggerated facial expression. Trattoria Meloni is open every day, from noon to 10 p.m.

Meloni’s Albania protocol, however, is on hold. After the Italian courts freed the first arrivals, her government quickly passed a decree that deemed every country on its list fully safe. Meloni and her allies attacked the magistrates for misinterpreting the law and for playing politics with Italy’s borders.

Italy tried again. Another seven men, believed to be from Bangladesh and Egypt, landed in Albania. On Nov. 11, the Italian courts decided they needed clarification from the ECJ on the application of Italy’s new rules. Until then, the seven people in Albania will be released and brought to Italy.

The Italy-Albania protocol was always logistically questionable and legally fraught. Even supporters of the deal noted that the risk of failure was high. Judges in Italy have challenged such expedited border procedures and overruled detention orders in Italy. It follows that they are extending these protections to Italy’s claimed jurisdictions in Albania.

In other words, Italy’s Albania project is hobbled because Italy’s approach to asylum-seekers from “safe” countries is broadly under scrutiny. This means the courts have not ruled on whether Italy’s Albania externalization scheme is itself legal. Meloni, keen to avoid a multimillion-dollar migration boondoggle, will not give up easily. A bare-bones staff is maintaining these Albania facilities as Italy awaits the judicial decisions that may determine the future of the scheme. The ECJ rulings could also have ramifications far beyond Italy.

In 2026, the EU will implement its new migration pact, a controversial plan to reform its migration and asylum system. Expedited asylum procedures will be implemented across the EU. Member states will use a different metric than Italy’s safe country distinction, but the aims are similar: to speed up asylum claims and quickly repatriate people. It will require the expansion of detention facilities across the EU.

Or can the infrastructure exist elsewhere? The EU has been reluctant to outsource asylum procedures in the past, but the politics are changing, especially given the strength of the right after this year’s European Parliament elections. Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen has called the Albania deal an example of “out-of-the-box thinking.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has said he is “closely” watching Albania. At least 15 other member states sent a letter to von der Leyen urging her to explore these kinds of agreements on behalf of member states.

Rama has said there will be no other such deals, but he’s changed his mind before. And there are other small powers that see the benefits of making good with the EU. All of this will come at a grave human and financial cost. Once people are desperate enough to come, they will come, especially if they lack other legal and safe pathways. That they might be deterred is one more fiction of the Italy-Albania scheme, part of an effort in Europe — and around the world — to pretend the act of hardening borders will solve migration and the political, economic and social frictions that come with it.

In Gjader, on an early afternoon in August, there is no one walking around the village, which is really one long road — a few minutes drive from one side to the other, if that. At the end of this road leading into, or out of, Gjader, there is a crooked white sign with faded green script. It is a quote attributed to Martin Luther King Jr.: “Kush e pranon te keqen eshte po aq fajtor sa ai qu e ben,” it says in Shqip. “Who accepts evil is as guilty as the one who does it.”

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In the Paris region, the number of primary homes on Airbnb increased by more than 80 percent in May 2024 compared to the same time the previous year as local families hoped to benefit from pent-up travel demand before the Olympic Games.

When things are so expensive, renting out a room can be a lifeline.

“I know a former IT professional who wanted to become a teacher but needed to rent a room out to guests occasionally to pay the mortgage,” says Maarten Bruinsma, chairman of Amsterdam Gastvrij, a group representing holiday rental owners. “When things are so expensive, renting out a room can be a lifeline.”

via Airbnb

But the rise in short-term rentals has also caused consternation in tourist hotspots where buy-to-let properties are deemed to have contributed to inflated house prices. In Athens, for example, the city council is involved in a legal dispute with companies buying entire apartment blocks to let on platforms such as Airbnb or Booking.com.

Although “illegal hotels” and people who own multiple rental properties do reduce the housing stock, they are not the average host on Airbnb. Focusing on these isolated cases risks making short-term rentals a scapegoat for more substantial factors driving house price inflation, such as rising building costs and mortgage rates. Regulating on this basis also risks strangling critical income streams for people facing tough economic conditions.

In Amsterdam, short-term rentals have been limited to 30 nights per year while cities such as Barcelona plan to stop renewing short-term rental licenses by 2028. Very strict rules that effectively banned short-term rentals in New York were shown to hit the city’s poorest boroughs the hardest, reducing visitor spending in these regions by an estimated $1.6 billion per year and cutting worker earnings generated by Airbnb guest spending by $573 million.

Although “illegal hotels” and people who own multiple rental properties do reduce the housing stock, they are not the average host on Airbnb.

Meanwhile, hotel prices in Manhattan have jumped more than 50 percent year-on-year to reach an average daily rate of $524 — far more than most people can afford. Evidence suggests that short-term rentals help reduce tourism accommodation prices in key European destinations by providing affordable alternatives.

In Europe, where some regulation on short-term rentals is implemented at a national level, governments also risk exacerbating rural-urban divides. “In rural areas where it isn’t viable to keep a hotel running all year round, short-term rentals are usually the only way to derive tourist income outside peak season,” says Klaus Ehrlich, general secretary of RuralTour, the European Federation of Rural Tourism. “What’s more is that these regions usually have a housing surplus because there isn’t the residential demand that there is in cities.”

via Airbnb

Failing to address the problem

Cities such as Barcelona that are regulating the entire short-term rental market in an attempt to relieve pressure on the housing market are finding that the rules have limited effect.

“What you have to think about is how many of those short-term rentals are going to return to the housing stock and the answer is very few,” says Matthew Dass, associate director at Oxford Economics, pointing out that a significant proportion of the listings on Airbnb are either holiday homes or spare rooms in longer-term rentals.

Over-regulation simplifies a complex mixture of economic factors such as urban migration, aging societies and rigid urban planning regimes that underpin the lack of housing in European cities. For some, such policies boil down to political point scoring. “The reason the regulation doesn’t target the hotels and hostels is that it would cost roughly €200,000 per hotel room to revoke their license,” says Bruinsma, noting that restricting short-term rentals is free.

Individuals who choose to continue letting out their property face hefty fines for any mistakes. Failing to report the number of nights someone is staying in advance can leave hosts in Amsterdam liable to receive a fine of up to €8,700.

Restrictive regulations can have unintended consequences.

In Amsterdam, individuals account for 95 percent of Airbnb hosts. They are hardest hit by the city’s strict short-term rental regulations to limit the number of tourists in particular areas. A recent report by Oxford Economics, which highlighted the economic and social contributions of short-term rentals throughout the EU, warns that restrictive regulations can have unintended consequences, increasing the cost of accommodations for everyday travelers and affecting local host earnings.

“What you actually see is that while short-term rentals in Amsterdam have decreased by 52 percent because of these regulations, overall guest nights have increased by 12 percent,” explains Dass. “So what we estimate is that from that policy there’s about €269 million in lost host earnings in Amsterdam.”

Proposals such as Spain’s to increase VAT on short-term rentals to 21 percent also pinch the pockets of individuals looking to rent their property. Unlike hotels, which can write off the cost of repairs or cleaning as a taxable expense, renting a room is not considered a “business activity,” further diminishing the incentive to host or rent out a spare room.

A better way to regulate

Balanced policies start with ensuring transparency across the short-term rental market. In February 2024, the European Parliament approved new data-sharing rules obliging large online platforms to share rental data with local authorities each month. This will help correct misconceptions about short-term rentals and aims to prevent over-regulation that risks harming local communities and tourism. If governments aren’t careful, they’ll squeeze those struggling to get by — while the real housing crisis goes unchecked. Smart policies will maintain the economic benefits of short-term rentals while addressing potential downsides. By leveraging data, governments can not only craft more effective policies but also demonstrate that their policies are achieving the intended effect.