Analysis
Meloni is banking on the EU to save its Albanian detention centers
The next significant deadline will be the EU Court of Justice's hearing on the questions referred to it on the issue of “safe countries of origin,” set for Feb. 25. The Court’s decision will take a few months, and is expected to arrive this spring.
The government said they will “go ahead at any cost” – but how? A day after yet another flop of the Albania project, the government's belligerent statements clash with reality: unless there is further and far more serious forcing of the regulatory framework, the migrant detention centers across the Adriatic will remain empty for some time.
“We will continue on this path with conviction,” said the Interior Ministry, echoed by FdI parliamentarians. In the meantime, however, Italian workers for the cooperative managing the Shengjin and Gjader centers have been told to return home, while the latest group of 43 migrants, Bangladeshis and Egyptians, were transferred on Jan. 31 to the port of Cara in Bari, welcomed with applause by an ARCI sit-in.
At this point, the next significant deadline will be the EU Court of Justice's hearing on the questions referred to it on the issue of “safe countries of origin,” set for Feb. 25. The Court’s decision will take a few months, and is expected to arrive this spring.
“We are working to overcome this hurdle as well,” the Prime Minister’s Office said on Jan. 31, just after the Court of Appeal referred the matter once again to the judges in Luxembourg and decided the release of all foreign nationals detained overseas. The government did not go into any details on how it intends to proceed. At this point, there is no new legislative initiative ready, and the rumors circulating as of Thursday about a new appeal to the Supreme Court have been denied – in great part because the Supreme Court has already withheld judgment in the cases involving the first transfers, and little has changed since then.
As expected by jurists and experts, turning the government’s “safe countries” list into primary legislation did not change the outcome of the validation requests for detention abroad. Among other issues, the law passed requires the Council of Ministers to prepare a report by January 15 of each year, based on information from the qualified sources cited in the EU directive, that goes into the merits of the situation of each state on the list. There is still no such document for 2025, forcing the Court of Appeals in Rome to refer to the “country sheets” attached to the old inter-ministerial decree of May 2024, brimming with exceptions for categories of people in both Bangladesh and Egypt.
The reasoning of the Court of Appeals was the same as that of the specialized immigration sections of ordinary courts, from which the government took away jurisdiction back in December. The executive gave that jurisdiction over to the Courts of Appeals because there were few other options available – such as the scenarios being floated of assigning it to Justices of the Peace or even the Regional Administrative Courts. That would have been a very serious bending of the rules, because decisions that concern the sphere of individual rights, such as asylum and personal liberty, would have been handed over to bodies that deal with completely different matters. However, it is true that Justices of the Peace decide on the detentions of foreign nationals in repatriation centers in situations of administrative irregularity.
In any case, there must be a reason why the government hasn’t already transferred jurisdiction over the detention of asylum seekers to the Justices of the Peace, especially given the very high approval rates. It was probably opposition from the Presidency. To do so at this point, in order to bypass courts deemed inconvenient for a second time, would make the accusation of cherry picking judges even more obvious.
The other option envisaged by the Italian government is an intervention at the EU level. The Interior Ministry's latest statements are pointing in this direction. “The EU partners, in full agreement with the Commission, are considering strengthening the EU rules that support the procedures at the border, applied also in Albania, not only by moving forward the the entry into force of certain rules of the Pact but also through innovative solutions,” the Ministry reiterated on Feb. 1.
In concrete terms, this would involve making some points of the Migration and Asylum Pact, which would otherwise be effective from June 2026, enter into force immediately. It would suffice to do so with the article regarding “safe countries,” which provides for the possibility of considering countries “safe” even when there are territorial exceptions and exceptions for categories of people.
For Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Piantedosi, this would mean making an about-turn from the line they have been pushing for months, namely that detentions in Albania are actually allowed under current rules. But in such cases, it doesn’t matter if one is right, the only thing that matters is to achieve the goal: consistency is easily sacrificed and judged of little value.
At this point, the possibility of bringing forward some points of the Pact has been talked about only informally, but it is technically possible. The Commission would have to submit a proposal – a simple matter because it is limited to a few articles – then Parliament and the Council would have to approve it. We are in the realm of hypothetical scenarios, but the global climate is what it is: from Washington to Berlin, the anti-migrant propaganda is getting stronger and stronger. This is what the Meloni government is betting on.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/albania-governo-allangolo-senza-un-intervento-dellue on 2025-02-02