A constitutional battle has erupted in Rome as judges shot down a key element of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Albanian migrant detention centre scheme and sent migrants back to Italy.
Judges in Rome ordered the return of 12 migrants, ten from Bangladesh and six from Egypt, who were removed to detention centres established in Albania earlier this week, ruling that their homelands are not safe and therefore cannot face deportation, broadcaster RAI reports.
The ruling has thrown into question the viability of the Albania scheme, which fellow European nations and even top Eurocrats in Brussels are looking to as a potential framework for handling illegal immigration into the bloc.
Under the Albania scheme, illegals would be sent first to detention centres in the Balkan country to have their asylum claims processed offshore rather than being permitted to remain in Italy during the interim. On Monday, 16 migrants became the first to be sent to the centres in Albania, which are under Italian legal jurisdiction.
Prime Minister Meloni’s government had classified 22 nations as considered safe for the return of illegals, including Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Morocco, Montenegro, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Serbia, Sri Lanka, and Tunisia.
However, judges ruled this week that countries like Egypt and Bangladesh could not be considered as “safe”, citing a previous decision by the European Court of Justice which found that countries outside the EU could not be classified as safe unless their entire territory is found to be free from danger, such as persecution, torture or the possibility of indiscriminate violence.
The conservative government slammed the ruling, claiming that elected representatives should be the people deciding the nation’s immigration policies.
Prime Minister Meloni said: “I have convened a council of ministers for next Monday to solve this problem… I think it is not up to the judiciary to say which are the safe countries but to the government.”
Immigration hardliner Deputy PM Mattei Salvini went further, saying that the ruling is an “attack on Italy and the Italians launched by a part of the politicised judiciar and that whoever prevents the defence of borders endangers the country”.
Even fellow centrist Deputy PM Antonio Tajani was critical of the ruling, saying: “I am used to respecting the decisions of the judiciary but I would also like the decisions of the executive and legislative branches to be respected, because a democracy is based on the tripartition of powers.
“The judiciary must apply the laws, not to modify them or prevent the executive from being able to do its job. Power always comes from the people, who have chosen this parliament and this government. The will of the people must always be respected.”
Justice Minister Nordio argued that the definition of an unsafe country was too broad, noting: “If we believed that there are no safe countries in which rules such as the death penalty apply, then the United States would not be a safe country either.”
