An Italian court has ordered that dozens of migrants taken to Albania must be transferred to Italy in the latest setback for Rome’s controversial plan to deter people from arriving by sea.
The group of 43 from Egypt and Bangladesh, whose asylum requests have already been rejected, were brought to Albania this week after being picked up in the Mediterranean.
They were housed at two camps the Italian government built in the Balkan country in the hope of using them to house migrants while their asylum applications were processed.
The appeals court in Rome referred the case to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg, which is expected to issue a ruling next month.
It’s a scheme devised by the right-wing government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to deter illegal migration by sea by holding asylum proceedings outside the EU.
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The facilities were set up to house up to 3,000 migrants rescued by the Italian coastguard each month.
Italy is the first country for tens of thousands of migrants who make the perilous journey across the central Mediterranean Sea.
But Friday’s ruling was the third time judges have defied the proposal and ordered migrants be taken to Italy since a first group was taken to Albania in October.
Opposition politician Nicola Fratoianni said: “As any person with common sense would have imagined, yet another deportation of migrants to Albania has come to nothing.”
The Italian interior ministry declined to comment.
The migrants would probably be taken to Italy on Saturday, Reuters said, quoting sources close to the situation.
The Albanian facilities have been empty since November, when judges last ordered those detained there to be transferred to Italy, citing doubts over the scheme’s compliance with a recent ECJ ruling.
That ruling, which was not specifically related to Italy, said with regard to migrants that no nation of origin could be considered safe if even just a part of its territory was deemed dangerous.
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Italian judges said the ruling threw into question the government’s plan to take to Albania migrants from a list of “safe” countries, in the hope of swiftly repatriating them when their asylum requests were, in all likelihood, rejected.
Senior figures in Ms Meloni’s coalition government have accused the courts of trying to undermine the plan for political reasons.
The ECJ is set to review Italy’s scheme in the next few weeks to clarify whether it is in compliance with EU law.
