Giorgia Meloni is at an apparent dead end in her efforts to continue with her plan to deport migrants to Albania due to legal obstacles posed by the courts. However, the Italian prime minister is determined to move forward. Among other reasons, because she feels supported by Brussels and by many EU countries that view her initiative favorably: representatives from 11 member states and the president herself attended last week’s meeting in the Belgian capital to explain her model. of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen.
Although the first trial failed, with 16 migrants deported last week who ended up arriving in Italy anyway, Meloni believes that the door to deportations has already been opened. Now, it is simply a matter of persevering and perfecting the mechanism with the legal reforms that are necessary. And that is it: in a Council of Ministers meeting this Monday afternoon, it has approved a decree law that reaffirms its criteria for rapid deportation protocols and with which it hopes to be able to force the judges to validate the next transfer to Albania. Among other things, it has reduced from 22 to 19 the countries that Italy considers safe and whose citizens can therefore apply the rapid protocol with deportation to Albania. Cameroon, Colombia and Nigeria have fallen from the list.
According to the Italian media, another ship with a new group will set sail next week, as soon as new rescues occur and weather conditions allow it. However, according to jurists, the decree law will not change anything, as the courts have limited themselves to applying a recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU, and a second transfer is likely to fail again. Given these warnings, the Minister of Justice, Matteo Piantedosi, explained after the Council of Ministers that the European resolution “has not been well understood.”
In the midst of criticism from the opposition for a deportation plan that it already considers failed and illegal, the Five Star Movement has denounced the Government before the Court of Accounts, for the enormous investment involved in building a reception camp and another for the internment of Albania (800 million in five years and a first transfer that cost about 18,000 euros for each of the 16 migrants). The Pope and the Italian Church have also clearly positioned themselves against the Albania model. The vice president of the Italian bishops, Francesco Savino, said on Sunday that “migrants are brothers and sisters with their dignity, not packages to be thrown from one place to another.” And this Monday, Francisco warned that we cannot “close the door to immigrants.” “The migrant must be welcomed, accompanied and integrated,” he stressed in a video message addressed to an assembly of Italian Catholic Action.
Meloni’s response is this decree law, a norm of higher rank than the one in force until now, which was a decree of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in coordination with that of Justice and Interior. In the midst of a clash with the Italian judiciary, but also with a resolution from the Court of Justice of the EU, he hopes to protect the Government’s criteria and that the judges will have to accept its guidelines. The far-right Executive has harshly attacked the courts these days, with the accusation of arrogating to themselves powers that do not correspond to them, and insists that they cannot be the ones who set foreign policy – in this case which countries can be considered safe a priori to be able to retain at the border those of its citizens who request asylum, in the event that it will be rejected. In the new decree, the Government insists on maintaining its list of countries that it considers safe. The tension in the atmosphere is already reminiscent of the days of Silvio Berlusconi and his attacks on judges, to whom he attributed ideological hatred and conspiracies to overthrow him, against the popular will. Identical arguments are repeated.
The judiciary responds that the courts only apply the laws, which is what should be changed in any case. This is what Meloni is going to try, with an uncertain result, because in reality, according to jurists, it is the European regulations that should be modified. The Court of Rome, which ordered on Friday the transfer to Italy of the 12 migrants deported in the Albanian Gjadër internment camp, referred, precisely, to a recent European ruling, which is binding.
Meloni’s conviction to insist on his plan is also due to the fact that the Commission itself has announced its intention to review all the regulations regarding which countries can be considered safe, to facilitate deportations. The Government has repeated that what Italy is doing will soon be done throughout the EU, starting with the entry into force of the European immigration pact in 2026.
The key to the confrontation between the far-right Executive and the Italian courts is at that point; in what is considered a safe country, which, therefore, can be a priori repatriate a person who requests asylum, because there are no reasons that justify accepting their request. This is a fundamental piece of the scheme in the controversial rapid protocol for border detention, management and rejection of asylum applications that Italy approved in March 2023 and that it wants to apply in Albania.
To apply this accelerated procedure, Italy established a list of 22 safe countries, whose citizens can be deported to Albania, because their asylum requests are expected to be rejected. However, a recent October 4 ruling by the EU Court of Justice effectively trimmed that list, leaving safe countries at just seven. This has dire consequences for the Albania model: The main States of origin of immigration arriving through the Mediterranean, such as Bangladesh, Egypt or Tunisia, are dropped from the list. That is to say, it practically condemned the deportation plan to closure.
The resolution indicated, responding to a particular case, that if in a country there is an area where human rights are not respected, or there is a group that suffers discrimination, the entire country should be considered unsafe. In its list of 22 States classified as safe, Italy includes exceptions of this type in 15 and, therefore, when the Court of Rome received the request to validate the detention at the border, in this case in Albania, of seven Bangladeshis and five Egyptians, denied it. Because those countries are not safe, according to the criteria of the European ruling. For the rest, the legal obstacle could be seen coming, because the courts of Palermo and Catania, in Sicily, where most of the requests are processed, have already rejected 90% of the requests for validation of retention in the last year and a half. on border. Now, the Government once again reaffirms its list of safe countries, and we will have to see what the courts do regarding the next deportation.