MILAN (AP) — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s program to screen asylum seekers outside the European Union’s borders in Albania hit another snag Monday when a court in Rome refused to rule on a formal request to detain seven migrants who were transferred to the Balkan country last week.
The decision means that the seven migrants, from Bangladesh and Egypt, will be taken to Italy by navy ship just days after their arrival in Albania.
It is a repeat of what happened to the first 12 migrants in the program, who were also returned to Italy by a new court ruling last month, shortly after the opening of two Italian-operated migrant screening centers in Albania.
In both cases, courts referred the cases to the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg to decide whether the migrants’ countries of origin are considered safe countries for repatriation. The first twelve also came from Egypt and Bangladesh.
The courts’ move has fueled the anger of Meloni’s far-right government, which is seeking strategies to ease pressure on Italy due to the arrival of migrants seeking a better life in Europe.
In the latest ruling, the court specified that it was seeking clarification on which countries are considered safe “solely for the purpose of determining the procedure to be applied.”
“The exclusion of a state from the list of safe countries of origin does not prevent the repatriation and/or deportation of migrants whose asylum applications have been rejected,” the court said in its ruling.
Under a five-year deal, Albania would allow Italy to run two migrant centers on its territory with the capacity to screen up to 3,000 migrants per month to be vetted for asylum or returned to their home countries.
Human rights groups and non-governmental organizations active in the Mediterranean have labeled the agreement as a dangerous precedent that violates international law.
So far, Italy has failed to reach even close to that number for possible screening in Albania, despite thousands of arrivals on Italian shores since the centers opened. Migrants sent to Albania must be adult males, traveling without family members and from countries considered safe.
