The Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, once again defies both the courts of her country and European regulations on asylum and will try again, starting next Monday, a second deportation to Albania of migrants rescued in the Mediterranean. As confirmed by official sources, with the arrival of good weather and the resumption of boat arrivals by sea from Libya and Tunisia, the military ship Poundthe same one that made the first trip, will be located 20 miles from the island of Lampedusa, outside Italian territorial waters, to begin collecting castaways and then sail to Albania.
The Italian far-right government thus insists on its plan after the failure of its first trial, which began on October 16, when the first 16 people transferred ended up being transferred to Italy anyway in three days. Two of them for being minors, two for being in vulnerable conditions and the rest, by decision of a court in Rome that did not validate their retention, based on a recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The judicial setback has jeopardized the entire Albania modelMeloni’s star plan against illegal immigration and supported by the European Commission as an “innovative” response to the problem, but she has decided to move forward. It has approved a decree law that seeks to force magistrates to obey the Executive, since the previous norm was of lower rank and it considers that it is mandatory.
That is to say, in a matter of days there will be a second round of combat between the far-right Government and the Italian justice system, with a more than uncertain outcome, because in reality the underlying clash is with the current European law, from 2013, which the courts Italians claim that they are limited to applying as a superior rule of law. According to the Government, however, the Italian judges have misinterpreted the recent European ruling, and it hopes that they will now interpret it as the Executive wishes. Furthermore, they emphasize, European regulations will change in 2026, with the entry into force of the controversial EU migration pact, and will already be the same as that applied now by Italy. The judges respond to this argument that this will be in 2026, but not until then.
The conflict has already led to a procedure that was foreseen from the beginning: a court in Bologna, faced with a case of asylum request, has submitted a request this week to the European court to clarify what it should do, and confirm that it has than applying the European standard and disobeying Italian law. The problem is that the decision of the Luxembourg Court of Justice will take months. Meloni can’t wait that long.
Protocol feasibility
What is at stake is the viability of the controversial rapid protocol, approved by Italy a year and a half ago, for the detention of migrants at the border, in this case in Albania, rapid rejection of asylum and repatriation requests. It is the basis of Albania modelbut according to the Italian courts, which must validate the process on a case-by-case basis, it does not fit with European regulations. With the first deportation, the immigration section of the Rome court rejected the authorities’ request, taking as a reference the doctrine of the European court regarding so-called safe countries when processing or not processing an asylum application. It is the key concept on which the legal conflict originates.
A safe country is one in which human rights are respected and whose citizens are therefore presumed to have no reason to seek asylum. That is, for Italy it means that this rapid protocol of rejecting their application can be applied to them, without even allowing them to enter the country. There are other conditions: only healthy, adult men who are rescued in international waters by Italian flag vessels are selected.
The Meloni Government had a list of 22 safe countries of origin and if a person rescued at sea comes from one of those countries it means that they can be deported to Albania. The problem is that the criteria of the European ruling are more restrictive than the Italian ones: it is enough that human rights are not respected in one area of a country or that there is a persecuted group for the entire country to be considered unsafe. It reduced that list to only seven countries, and left out all the main countries of origin of sea arrivals to Italy, such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Libya or Tunisia. In short, it rendered Albania’s entire plan useless, with a minimum cost estimated by the Government of 635 million over five years.
The first test of the Italian Government collided squarely with this reality: the 12 migrants held in the Gjadër internment camp were from Bangladesh and Egypt, considered unsafe according to the scales of the European ruling, and, therefore, the court in Rome did not validate its retention. In the coming days, the same scene will repeat itself, and the outcome will mark the success or failure of the Albania model.
Italy has now slightly tweaked its list of safe countries, where it considers there are no human rights violations, to be able to deport its citizens to Albania. It has reduced it from 22 to 19, and they are the following: Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Morocco, Montenegro, Peru, Senegal , Serbia, Sri Lanka and Tunisia.
On the contrary, according to the European ruling, only seven would be safe: all Europeans except one. That is, Italy could only transfer to Albania the citizens of these States, with hardly any arrivals by sea: Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia. In the clash between these lists lies the conflict that now arises again.
