Blow to
Meloni’s Albania deal as court orders asylum seekers’ return to Italy
Judges’
decision on 12 men held in Italian migration hub in Albania also casts doubt on
EU’s hardline plans
Lorenzo
Tondo in Palermo, Jon Henley and Ashifa Kassam
Fri 18 Oct
2024 17.14 BST
The last 12
asylum seekers being held in a new Italian migration hub in Albania must be
transferred to Italy, a court has ruled, in a heavy blow to a controversial
deal between the far-right Rome government and Tirana aimed at curbing migrant
arrivals.
The decision
casts further doubt on the feasibility and legality of plans by the EU,
discussed on Thursday, to explore ways of establishing migrant processing and
detention centres outside the bloc as part of a new hardline approach to
migration.
The Italian
judges’ ruling on Friday means the Rome government’s new facility has
essentially been emptied after four of the first group of 16 asylum seekers to
arrive at the processing centre were immediately sent back to Italy on
Thursday.
Brothers of
Italy, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni’s party, angrily condemned
the decision on social media, blaming “politicised magistrates” who “would like
to abolish Italy’s borders. We will not allow it.”
Matteo
Piantedosi, the interior minister, said: “We will appeal all the way to the
court of cassation. We will continue with what Italy is achieving in Albania,
and beyond, it will become European law.”
The 16, all
of whom the Italian government argue should ultimately be returned to their
“safe” home countries of Egypt and Bangladesh, arrived at the Albanian port of
Shëngjin from the Italian island of Lampedusa aboard a military vessel on
Wednesday.
Under the
deal, signed by the far-right prime minister, Meloni, and her Albanian
counterpart, Edi Rama, men intercepted in international waters crossing from
Africa to Europe will be held at the centre while their claims are processed.
The scheme,
which could process up to 3,000 men a month, excludes women, children and
vulnerable individuals, who will be taken to Italy. Of the first four men
returned to Italy, two were thought to be under-age and two deemed vulnerable.
The
remaining 12 were considered by the judges in Rome to be at risk of violence if
they were deported to their home countries, in a decision that in effect upheld
a 4 October ruling by the European court of justice (ECJ).
Only
migrants coming from a list of 22 nations Italy classified as “safe” can be
sent to Albania. Egypt and Bangladesh are among them, but the ECJ ruled that a
country outside the bloc could not be declared safe unless its entire territory
was deemed safe.
The judge
Luciana Sangiovanni said: “The rejection of the individuals’ detention in
structures in Albania equated to Italian border or transit zones … is due to
the impossibility of recognising the states of origin of the detained
individuals as ‘safe countries’.”
Opposition
parties and national newspapers in Italy said the initiative, which will cost
about €1bn (£830m) over five years, was already a failure, noting that the
government had spent €250,000 transporting the 16 men to Albania on a military
vessel.
The
Democratic party said the plan had failed and Meloni should apologise, while
the Europe party demanded Piantedosi’s resignation.
A network of
NGOs representing 160 organisations that support undocumented people has
described the Italy-Albanian deal as “inhumane, absurd and a costly system that
breaches international human rights obligations”.
Michele
LeVoy, of the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants,
or Picum, said the network was “appalled” at growing support among EU member
states and the European Commission for offshore migrant hubs.
“Aside from
being a logistical and financial nonsense, it’s a cruel system that breaches
international and EU law and puts people at risk of being abused with no clear
options to get justice and remedies,” LeVoy said in a statement.
At a summit
in Brussels on Thursday, EU leaders discussed setting up “return hubs” –
processing and detention centres – in countries outside the bloc and the
commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said talks on how they might work
would continue.
The summit’s
final statement reflected the bloc’s tough new mood on migration, calling for
“determined action at all levels to facilitate, increase and speed up returns
from the EU using all relevant EU policies, instruments and tools”.
Activists
and researchers have repeatedly questioned whether, compared with a
well-funded, EU-based asylum system, offshore hubs or “migrant hotspots” could
ever be deemed humane, effective, or even legal under international law.
Besides
Albania’s deal with Italy and a small-scale agreement between Denmark and
Kosovo, it is in any case unclear which non-EU countries might be willing to
host such centres. Some diplomats suspect that for this reason alone, the idea
may be a non-starter.
Meloni said
after the summit that there were “many countries looking at the Albania model”
and several other far-right leaders praised what the Dutch prime minister, Dick
Schoof, described as “a different mood in Europe”.
Others,
however, were cautious, questioning the expense, complexity and effectiveness
of an “offshore” model.
EU irregular
immigration has plummeted since the 2015 migration crisis and is down more than
40% this year compared with 2023, but the bloc’s tough approach reflects a
string of electoral success by far-right, anti-immigration parties.
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