THE EU’S TOP court has backed Italian judges who questioned a list of “safe countries” drawn up by the Italian government to deport International Protection applicants to detention centres in Albania.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s plan to outsource processing of asylum seekers to a non-European Union country and speed up deportations has been closely scrutinised by others in the EU.

The costly scheme has been frozen for months by legal challenges.

Italian magistrates have cited the European court’s decision that EU states cannot designate an entire country as “safe” when certain regions are not.

In its ruling published today, the EU Court of Justice did not contest Italy’s right to designate so-called “safe countries of origin”.

“However, a Member State may not include a country in the list of safe countries of origin if that country does not offer adequate protection to its entire population,” it ruled.

It said the sources of information on which the government’s “safe country” designation is based should be accessible both to the defendant and to courts.

In the case considered by the court, two Bangladeshi nationals taken to an Albanian migrant centre were denied the possibility of “challenging and reviewing the lawfulness of such a presumption of safety”.

“A member state may not designate as a ‘safe’ country of origin a third country which does not satisfy, for certain categories of persons, the material conditions for such a designation,” it said.

Italy’s “safe country” list included Egypt, Bangladesh and Tunisia, where human rights groups have documented abuses against minorities.

Italy’s government said the court was “claiming powers that do not belong do it, in the face of responsibilities that are political”.

Meloni and her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama signed the deal in November 2023.

Under the plan, Italy would finance and operate detention centres designed to fast-track the processing of asylum seekers from “safe” countries, and therefore unlikely to be eligible for asylum.

Several people have been sent to the centres from October last year but they have been sent back to Italy after judges ruled they did not meet the criteria to be detained there.

Italy responded by modifying its “safe” list but judges ruled twice more against subsequent detentions and referred the issue to the ECJ.

The court noted, however that European law will change in June 2026, allowing “exceptions for such clearly identifiable categories of persons.”

© AFP 2025

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