42 out of the 49 illegal migrants escorted by the Italian Navy to Albania two days ago remain in the Gjader migrant center awaiting the processing of their asylum requests. For the first time since the completion of the centers, leftist judges in Rome couldn’t immediately overrule their detention and prevent PM Giorgia Meloni’s ‘Albania protocol’ from working as intended, only ordering seven people—five minors and two “vulnerable” adults—to be taken back to Italy.
However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Meloni won the battle with the courts and will be able to fill the migrant centers without further issues. The recent changes in the legislation only require judges to validate or reject the detention of each migrant individually, and it’s safe to expect the Rome civil court—which has been trying to cancel the project since its inception—to try bringing back as many migrants as it can to Italy.
The court blocked the detention of migrants twice before, arguing that they couldn’t be deported even if rejected, as their countries of origin can’t be considered safe throughout their entire territory or for everyone—like political dissidents or homosexuals—regardless of where the migrants came from or whether they belonged to these categories.
The judges also referred the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which is expected to give a preliminary opinion in the coming weeks before issuing a final ruling sometime in the summer.
Despite the court in Rome wanting to suspend it in the meantime, the conservative Meloni government maintained the right to resume the Albania protocol with updated rules, so that activist judges must take into account migrant’s individual circumstances rather than automatically block the detention of entire groups.
The majority of the 42 migrants who are still in the Gjader detention center came from Bangladesh, and eight of them are Egyptian. They are all adult males—the protocol doesn’t allow the detention of minors, women, or those in poor health—just as the most recent Frontex data confirmed that virtually no women arrive in Europe through the Central Mediterranean route.
Their accelerated asylum procedure began on Wednesday, and the first decisions on whether to grant them protection or deport them back to their home countries can be issued in the coming days.
The purpose of the Albania protocol is to prevent failed asylum seekers from escaping deportation, which happens in the vast majority of cases when the asylum procedure is conducted on European soil. EU laws only allow the detention of migrants in exceptional cases. Since normal asylum procedures can take weeks or even months due to backlogs, most migrants have already disappeared within the Schengen area by the time deportation orders are issued. Unless they never enter the EU—hence, Albania.
Despite the general condemnation from the left both in Rome and Brussels, the protocol is not only supported by most EU member states, but the majority even called on the EU Commission to implement a similar procedure as the standard practice for the EU as a whole.
EU interior ministers are meeting in Warsaw today to discuss ways to expedite deportations from Europe, with a key focus on expanding the Albania-style system.
Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen promised that third-country “return hubs” would be part of her upcoming deportation package. However, even if she’s sincere, it could take years until such an initiative bears fruit.
Still, most EU governments are hoping for the Albania protocol to succeed and work as intended, both in preventing illegal secondary movements and as a general deterrent against illegal migration. If it works (and is not canceled by the ECJ), it must be pursued on the EU level as well, leaving the Commission no room for excuses.
Meanwhile, President Trump is reportedly preparing to build a similar system as well. On Wednesday, he instructed the relevant authorities to turn parts of the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba into a 30,000-person migrant facility that would help speed up asylum screenings and deportations. That capacity is comparable to the Albania protocol, as the two Italian centers in Gjader and Shengjin are intended to house 36,000 migrants a year.
