Italy’s far-right government has passed a new law to overcome a court ruling that risks blocking the country’s multimillion-dollar deal with Albania aimed at curbing migrant arrivals.
On Friday, a court in Rome ruled to transfer back to Italy the last 12 asylum seekers being held in the new Italian migration hub in Albania. The ruling has cast doubt on the feasibility and legality of plans by the EU to explore ways to establish migrant processing and detention centres outside the bloc as part of a new hardline approach to migration.
The group of individuals, who had arrived at the port of Shëngjin from Lampedusa onboard a military vessel last week, were among the 16 people transferred for the first time to the designated facility in Gjadër under the agreement between Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the Albanian prime minister, Edi Rama, aimed at holding men who are intercepted in international waters while trying to cross from Africa to Europe.
Four of the 16 men were immediately sent back to Italy on Thursday, including two who were underage and two who were deemed as vulnerable.
The remaining 12 individuals whom the Rome judges ordered be transferred back to Italy were returned via the port of Bari on Saturday in a blow to Meloni that risks turning the initiative into what aid workers and opposition groups have deemed a “complete failure” and a “financial disaster”.
Meloni’s party, the far-right Brothers of Italy, angrily condemned the decision on social media, blaming “politicised magistrates” who “would like to abolish Italy’s borders. We will not allow it.”
Italy’s justice minister, Carlo Nordio, attacked the judges, saying “the definition of a safe country cannot be up to the judiciary”.
The dispute that has sparked the clash revolves around the definition of what constitutes “safe countries” of origin. The 16 asylum seekers hailed from Egypt and Bangladesh, countries deemed safe by Italy, and therefore, according to the government, they should have been repatriated to their countries of origin.
However, the judges ordered their transfer to Italy, saying the men could be at risk of violence if repatriated, effectively upholding the 4 October ruling of the European court of justice that the Italian government appeared to have overlooked. As a general rule, EU law takes precedence over conflicting national laws.
The EU court made it clear that a country not entirely safe cannot be deemed safe, underlining that the condition of insecurity, even if limited to a specific part of the country, such as a certain region, could lead to the entire country being deemed unsafe.
The council of ministers approved the decree after an emergency meeting held late Monday afternoon. The aim of the new law is to draw up a new list of safe countries, which can be updated every six months, and to allow a court of appeal to reconsider rulings that order the transfer of asylum seekers to Italy. From now on, the country of origin will be a primary condition for repatriation. Meloni’s government hopes in this way to bind the magistrates’ decision to government decrees and not to international laws.
“In compliance with the ruling of the European court of justice, countries that contain unsafe territorial areas are excluded from the list: Nigeria, Cameroon and Colombia,” said the undersecretary to the presidency of the council, Alfredo Mantovano, in a press conference at Palazzo Chigi after the council of ministers’ meeting.
Meloni said: “We will continue to work tirelessly to defend our borders.”
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The row between the judges and the government escalated further on Sunday when Meloni published excerpts on social media of a letter sent by one prosecutor to a group which includes judges.
In it, Judge Marco Patarnello warned that Meloni was “stronger and much more dangerous” than the former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who faced frequent legal woes and who repeatedly attacked the judiciary.
Rightwing politicians said the letter proved the legal bias against the government.
Critics said however that Meloni did not post the rest of the text, in which Patarnello said “we must not engage in political opposition, but we must defend jurisdiction and the citizens’ right to an independent judge”.
On Monday, the president of the judiciary’s union, Giuseppe Santalucia, said: “We are not against the government, it would be absurd to think that the judiciary, an institution of the country, is against an institution of the country like political power.”