The government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has restarted its efforts to send asylum seekers for processing in Albania, despite ongoing legal efforts to close down the initiative.
Italy’s decree law on Safe Countries is now under review from the hostile judges of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
When the Italian navy’s P 402 ship Libra left the port of Messina late last week, it signalled Meloni’s continuing commitment to reducing migration pressures by ‘offshoring,’ or processing asylum claims in a safe third country. The move is facing opposition from judges in Bologna, involved in immigration law, who argue that individual migrant safety—or that of ‘categories of people at risk’—cannot be guaranteed in the Balkan country (and would-be European Union member state).
Disregarding the wishes of voters, the Bologna judges have sent their objections to the ECJ. Helpfully, they cite Nazi Germany as a hypothetical example of somewhere that could be designated a “safe country of origin” by official decree, suggesting if nothing else their disdain for Albania.
PM Meloni criticised the decision of the Bologna court as more of a “propaganda leaflet” than a legal ruling. Her government’s own legal initiative, after reaching an agreement with Tirana to open a detention and processing centre housing up to 36,000 migrants annually, was to declare the country a safe location (echoing the UK’s hapless ‘Rwanda Plan’). Whereas this decision was first made by inter-ministerial decree, the subsequent effort to designate safe countries by decree law is now under scrutiny at the EU’s Luxembourg-based ECJ.
While Italy is now once again stepping up its offshoring process during judicial deliberation, Brothers of Italy (FdI) MEP Carlo Fidanza denies that the government is seeking to clash with the judges:
If every time a rule is referred to the EU Court [the ECJ], that rule stopped being applied, we would live in anarchy … in no European country do magistrates ask not to proceed with repatriations.
“Germany is even sending back Afghans,” he added.
On October 18th this year, the immigration section of the Rome court compelled Libra to return to Italy the first 12 migrants hosted by the centre. It claimed Roman magistrates had not validated their detention in the centre. Migrant NGOs and the Union of Criminal Chambers president Francesco Petrelli have since defended Bologna’s referral of the decree law to the ECJ.
