Italian court rejects Meloni plan to hold asylum-seekers in Albania

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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s controversial plan to send asylum seekers rescued from the Mediterranean Sea to Albania has suffered a serious setback after a Rome immigration court rejected the offshore detention of the first group of migrants.

In its verdict, the Rome court’s immigration section ruled that 12 male migrants held in Albania — who originally come from Bangladesh and Egypt — “have the right to be taken to Italy” due to the “impossibility of recognising the states of origin of the detained persons as ‘safe countries’.”

The decision was founded on a recent verdict by the European Court of Justice, which ruled this month that countries cannot be deemed “partially safe” for the purpose of deciding on deportations.

An Italian official confirmed the 12 would be brought to Italy for further processing.

The verdict is an embarrassing political setback for Meloni, who has touted her scheme for holding would-be asylum seekers in centres in Albania as a means of fulfilling her pledge to reduce inflows of irregular migrants from across the Mediterranean.

Her plan — and its promise of processing asylum claims offshore — has attracted strong international interest, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen describing it as an example from which to draw lessons, and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer recently asking Meloni in Rome for more details.

Meloni expressed dismay at the ruling but insisted it would only be a temporary setback.

“Italians have asked me to stop illegal immigration and I will do my best, she said during an official trip to Lebanon. “I’m sorry that at a time when all of Europe is looking at something that Italy is trying to do, we’re trying, as always, to put spokes in the wheels.”

Meloni said she was convening an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday to discuss how to overcome the new legal obstacles. “I don’t think it’s the judges’ competence to determine which countries are safe and which are not; it’s the government’s competence,” she said. “Maybe the government needs to clarify better what is meant by a safe country.”

Italy has so far spent at least an estimated €60mn to build and equip the Albanian centres, which formally started operating on Wednesday with the arrival of an initial 16 migrants. 

Of that first group, selected from among hundreds of people rescued in the Mediterranean by Italian authorities in recent days, four were immediately deemed ineligible to be held in Albania and were taken onwards to Italy — two who were thought to be minors and two for medical reasons. 

Senator Lucio Malan, a member of Meloni’s rightwing Brothers of Italy party, called the court’s order to send the remaining 12 migrants back to Italy “scandalous”.

“Some politicised magistrates have decided there are no safe countries of origin,” the senator, who sits on the senate’s foreign relations committee, wrote on X. “It is impossible to detain those who enter illegally; it is forbidden to repatriate illegal immigrants.

“They would like to abolish the borders of Italy: we will not allow it,” he added.

The far-right League, the party of Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, called the court order “unacceptable”. 

Interior minister Matteo Piantedosi told a press conference on Friday afternoon that the government would appeal against the ruling with a higher court.

Lawyer Lorenzo Trucco, president of the Association for the Study of Immigration Law, hailed Friday’s decision, saying “the rule of law had prevailed over the illegitimate acts” of the government, and had exposed the “absurdity and unfairness” of the Italy-Albania deal.

The deal reached between Meloni and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama last year allowed Italy to build two migrant detention centres in Albania to hold up to 3,000 migrants while Italian authorities processed their asylum claims.

The deal specified that the centres would only hold healthy adult men from countries that Italy had already deemed “safe” for potential return. Those found to have valid asylum claims would be granted refuge in Italy, while those deemed to be illegal immigrants would be returned to their countries of origin through an expedited process

To prepare for the centres’ opening, Italy earlier this year designated 22 countries — including Bangladesh and Egypt — as safe for returns with some exceptions, such as for political dissidents from Egypt and LGBT+ people from Tunisia.

The EU court ruled that European law does not permit countries to be categorised as partially safe, which shaped the Rome court’s verdict. New EU rules due to come into force in 2026, however, will allow countries to be described as safe with exceptions for some regions or some categories of people.

Italy is seeking to advance implementation of that part of the bloc’s migration and asylum pact, said an EU diplomat. Von der Leyen, in a letter to the bloc’s leaders this week, committed to bringing the revision of the safe countries concept forward to 2025.

Additional reporting by Paola Tamma in Brussels