On the roads of the 2025 Giro, the Tour of Italy which started in Albania for the first time: "This race is the symbol of a connection"

In 2025, the first stages of the famous Giro, the Italian cycling grand tour, took place in Albania. The country is simultaneously holding its parliamentary elections on Sunday, May 11. While far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Albania's socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama continue to showcase their friendship, Tirana and Rome are demonstrating, on the sporting front, strengthened relations since the conservative national leader came to power, based in particular on the handling of the migration issue.

Albanian territory is in fact being used by Italy, with very limited success to date, to advance a strategy of externalizing asylum procedures intended to have a deterrent effect on the departure of irregular migrants to Italy.

The cyclists who set off on Albania's roads on Friday, however, did not have the opportunity to see the two Italian-registered detention centers set up by Rome in the port of Shëngjin and on a former military base in the town of Gjader. The annual competition, beloved by the Italians since 1909, started in the coastal city of Durrës, 56 kilometers to the south, and reached the capital, where the second stage took place before a final race in the Vlorë region, further south.

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