Italian judges on Friday struck down a request by the government to hold a group of migrants in a detention center in Albania, ordering that they should be taken to Italy, in a major setback for Giorgia Meloni’s flagship policy of outsourcing asylum requests.
It was the first ruling on the new policy since Ms. Meloni’s right-wing government began carrying out the plan, with the Italian Navy this week bringing a group of migrants to a center built in Albania to hear asylum claims from refugees who had been bound for Italy.
The judges’ decision, which for now applied to only 12 migrants, could likely apply to others, casting doubt on the future of an approach that other nations, and even the European Commission’s president, were looking to as a model. Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, said the government would appeal the judges’ decision and that it was ready to take the case all the way to Italy’s highest court.
Under the plan, Italy is seeking to send migrants rescued in the Mediterranean by Italian ships to the Balkan nation, where their asylum claims would be assessed. Only “non-vulnerable” men coming from “safe countries” were to be taken to the centers there. (Italy considers vulnerable men to be those who are ill and disabled. Both Egypt and Bangladesh are categorized as safe, according to Italian law.)
The first group of 12 men taken to Albania included six from Bangladesh and six from Egypt. They were in Albania for a few days before judges ruled that they could not be held there.
The judges in Rome who were called on Friday to review the cases ordered that the migrants be sent to Italy, arguing that because of a recent decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, they did not meet the criteria for detention in Albania.
Ms. Meloni warned that the judges’ decision would have implications that went way beyond Albania, making it much harder to repatriate migrants in general.
It meant “you cannot do any policy to defend your borders,” she told reporters during a visit to Lebanon on Friday. “I hope they then tell me how to solve” the issue of illegal immigration, she said.
Still, she said, “I am going to find a solution,” adding that she was sorry that this happened “at a moment when the whole of Europe is looking with interest at something Italy is doing.”
Italy’s interior ministry said that the migrants would be repatriated to Italy on Saturday morning. Their asylum requests had already been denied by a first commission, according to the ministry, but they can still appeal the decision. The judges in Rome ruled that the migrants cannot be held in a detention center while they await a decision on the appeal.
The decision cast serious doubts on the viability of a migrant outsourcing plan that had become one of Ms. Meloni’s flagship policies, as Italy struggles to manage migration to the country.
The judges’ ruling followed a decision by British judges who blocked the implementation of a proposal to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda, where their claims would be assessed.
Gennaro Santoro, a lawyer for one of the 12 men, said Italian authorities had sent his client to Albania “too hastily,” without considering the details of his case, a failure that the Italian judges had acknowledged.
The decision stirred angry reactions from the conservative parties in Italy’s governing coalition, and it drew a mix of relief from opponents of the plan, and scorn from the plan’s conservative supporters.
“Pro-immigrant judges should run for elections,” the anti-immigrant League party wrote in a statement. “But they should know they will not intimidate us.”
The German, nongovernmental organization Sea Watch, which operates rescue boats for migrants in the Mediterranean, wrote on X that “the whole media show organized by the Meloni government clashed with international and national law.”
Angelo Bonelli, an opposition lawmaker, raised concerns about the costs of the migrant centers, chastising the government for wasting public funds “for mere propaganda.” By his calculations, the detention of the first group of migrants had cost about 18,000 euros (roughly $19,000) per migrant.
“Who will pay for this operation?” he said in a statement online.
Matilde Siracusano, a lawmaker with the center-right Forza Italia party, defended the costs of the Italy-Albania protocol, saying on a television news program that the 134 million euros per year Italy plans to invested in the program for the next five years was less than a tenth of the 1.8 billion euros Italy spends annually for the reception of migrants within Italy. Opponents estimated the cost will be much higher.
Others faulted the government’s approach.
“The deal with Albania is illegal,” Elly Schlein, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party, wrote on X, adding that the government had already squandered enough resources on the plan. “I tell the government: go back and stop.”
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