The European Union’s top court has backed Italian judges who questioned a list of “safe countries” drawn up by Rome, as it prepares to deport migrants to detention centers in Albania. The hard-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni denounced the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) ruling, saying it “weakens policies to combat mass illegal immigration”.
Meloni’s plan to outsource migrant processing to a non-EU country and speed up repatriations of failed asylum seekers has been closely followed by others in the bloc. However, the costly scheme has been frozen for months due to legal challenges. Italian magistrates have cited the European court’s decision that EU states cannot designate an entire country as “safe” when certain regions are not.
The ECJ stated that Italy is free to decide which countries are “safe”, but warned that such a designation should meet strict legal standards and allow applicants and courts to access and challenge the supporting evidence. A country might not be classified “safe” if it does not offer adequate protection to its entire population, agreeing with Italian judges who raised this issue last year.
The court’s judgment was made in consideration of a case involving two Bangladeshi nationals who were rescued at sea by Italian authorities and taken to Albania, where their asylum claims were rejected based on Italy’s classification of Bangladesh as a “safe” country”. Dario Belluccio, a lawyer representing one of the Bangladeshi asylum seekers, believes the Albanian migrant camps scheme has been effectively “killed off” by the ruling. “It will not be possible to continue with what the Italian government had envisioned before this decision … Technically, it seems to me that the government’s approach has been completely dismantled,” he told Reuters.
Meloni’s office criticized the EU judgment, arguing that it allows national judges to dictate policy on migration, “further reducing the already limited” capacity of parliament and government to take decisions on the matter. “This is a development that should concern everybody,” the office said.
Despite the setback, Italy’s effort to curb undocumented migration by sea has seen some success, with 36,557 migrant arrivals year-to-date, slightly up from the same period in 2024 but significantly lower than the 89,165 recorded in 2023. The detention facilities in Albania, however, remain empty due to the ongoing judicial obstacles. A recent report revealed that the construction cost of these centers was seven times more than that of an equivalent center in Italy.