MILAN (AP) — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government vowed Monday to open controversial migrant processing centers in Albania that have remained inactive after Italian courts refused to approve the transfer of the first two groups of migrants.
Government ministers “reiterated their resolve to continue working on so-called ‘innovative solutions’ to the migration phenomenon,” Meloni’s office said in a statement. It gave no timeline.
The statement cited a court ruling last week by Italy’s highest court, which said Italian judges cannot replace government policy in deciding which countries are safe for the repatriation of migrants whose asylum claims have been rejected.
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The decision allows lower courts to make such decisions on a case-by-case basis, without establishing a blanket policy.
Meloni told reporters in Finland this weekend that the Supreme Court ruling had “substantially proven that the Italian government was right.”
Italy has allocated €650 million to run the centers over five years. The centers opened in October and are ready to accommodate up to 3,000 male migrants per month picked up by the Italian coast guard in international waters.
But two groups of migrants brought to Albania by an Italian coast guard ship were instead sent back to Italy after the courts refused to approve their transfer.
The Italian courts have both asked the European Court of Justice to draw up a list of safe countries for repatriation. The timing of the European Court’s ruling was not clear, but was expected to take months.
The statement from Meloni’s office said the plan to process migrants across EU borders in Albania has received strong support from other leaders on the sidelines of last week’s EU summit in Brussels.
A crackdown on migration got a boost last week when Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini was acquitted of charges of illegally detaining migrants he stopped from disembarking in Italy in August 2019, when he was interior minister .
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Follow AP’s global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
