For the second time, an Italian court has stepped in to block, and potentially scupper, key elements of Giorgia Meloni’s offshoring of asylum seekers to Albania. The Italian PM’s agreement last year with Tirana to set up camps there to detain migrants seeking refuge in Italy, pending consideration of their applications to stay, has been a key part of the hardline anti-immigrant policy central to her election.
The controversial model for dealing with asylum seekers had also elicited significant positive interest from European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen , along with other EU leaders. Meloni, one of the strongest critics of the EU’s attempts at internal burden-sharing on migration was also determined to burnish her pro-EU credentials and made much of her alternative approach.
The Italian court referred the initiative to the European Court of Justice, arguing , much as the British courts had in their challenge to the UK’s similar Rwanda plan, that the government’s contention that 19 countries, including Egypt and Bangladesh, were “safe” for quick return of failed asylum seekers broke EU requirements for a court-sanctioned process.
The judge ruled that seven Bangladeshi and Egyptian men brought to Albania by an Italian warship on Friday must be taken to Italy and cannot be detained in Albania while they await a decision on their asylum applications.
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The deal with Albania provided for two holding camps to house up to 3,000 male migrants. Those whose claims were deemed genuine would be permitted to go to Italy. Meloni had hoped to process up to 36,000 annually through the Albanian centres, at an estimated cost of € 800 million over five years.
The enormous costs of the scheme have, like the UK’s Rwandan policy, brought considerable criticism. Meloni, however, is unlikely to be deterred from a policy that she can sell to voters as evidence of her determination to act robustly on the issue while depicting herself as a victim of “undemocratic” judicial activism.