MILAN (AP) – Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni’s plan to screen asylum seekers outside the European Union’s borders in Albania hit another setback Monday when a Rome court refused to rule on a formal request to detain seven migrants transferred from the Balkan country last week.
This decision means that seven migrants, from Bangladesh and Egypt, will be brought to Italy by military ship, a few days after they arrived in Albania.
Albanian media showed images of a minibus accompanied by Italian police cars entering the Albanian port of Shengjin, where migrants were seen boarding a small boat.
It is a repeat of what happened to the first 12 migrants in the program, who were also sent back to Italy by another court decision last month shortly after the opening of two migrant screening centers in Albania operated by Italy.
In both cases, the courts referred the cases to the EU’s court of justice in Luxembourg to rule on whether the countries of origin of the migrants are considered safe countries for return. The first 12 were also from Egypt and Bangladesh.
This court action has sparked anger in Meloni’s far-right government, which has been looking for strategies to ease the difficulties in Italy due to the arrival of immigrants seeking a better life in Europe.
In a recent decision, the court stated that it wants clarification on which countries are designated as safe “so that it can be seen which procedure should be used.”
“The removal of a state from the list of safe countries does not prevent the return and/or deportation of those immigrants whose asylum applications have been rejected,” the court said in its decision.
Under the five-year deal, Albania will allow Italy to run two migrant centers on its territory with the capacity to screen up to 3,000 migrants a month for asylum or repatriation.
Human rights organizations and non-governmental organizations working in the Mediterranean have criticized the agreement as a dangerous precedent that conflicts with international law.
So far, Italy has failed to target anywhere near that number to be tested in Albania, despite the thousands of people who have arrived on Italian shores since the centers opened. Migrants sent to Albania must be adult males, traveling without family members, and from countries considered safe.
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