Italy sends rejected migrants to Albania

Italy began sending illegal migrants whose asylum requests were rejected in Albania. They will be accommodated in the two centers built there before being deported to their home countries.

The centers were built to serve as a wait, while the judicial authorities were pronounced on the merits of the asylum requests, but it turned out to be contrary to Italian law.

The first group of 40 failed candidates arrived in Albania on Friday to be kept until repatriation in their home countries in empty, retention centers, built by Italy, built for a blocked migration determination scheme.

Italy built two facilities in Albania last year with the intention of using them to process asylum requests by migrants rescued in the Mediterranean, hoping that it would serve migrants as a sign that even saving the sea would not be able to enter European territory.

Meloni’s failure

However, the scheme was suspended after the Italian courts repeatedly canceled the transfer of migrants, forcing the government to accept them in Italy and to consider their applications for protection.

Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s conservative coalition last month decided to use Albania instead as a sideline for people whose asylum requests had already been rejected.

It is not clear how long migrants will stay in Albania. According to Italian law, unsuccessful asylum candidates can be detained for up to 18 months while waiting for deportation.

The Italian authorities did not give details of the first group, which was taken by a naval ship from Brindisi, on the Adriatic coast, to the Albanian port of Shengin.

Reuters

Italy has poor results in the repatriation of illegal immigrants. In 2023, just over 4,000 migrants, without the right to remain in the EU, were forced to be sent home, with about one -third of them returned from France and Germany, official data show.

According to European law, migrants must be returned to the border state from which they entered the EU and it is responsible for considering their status and their possible deportation from Europe. This is not always proven, especially if the migrants were not registered upon entering the EU. Many of them use the time after receiving an order to leave, to hide from the authorities – often when they go to another European country.

Initially, Meloni hoped that the two Albanian camps would be able to process the applications of about 36,000 asylum applicants annually with citizenship from a list approved by the government of safe countries, with the idea of ​​quickly repatorting them after the probable rejection of their requests.

The government is still hoping to return to its original plan and is waiting for a decision by the Court of Justice, which can force Italian judges to process new asylum seekers sent to Albania.

The opinion of the EU court

On Thursday, the Chief Legal Expert of the European Court of Justice in the case came out with an opinion that European countries can draw up such lists from countries where they believe that the return of migrants who have been refused a stay in the EU is certain. However, they must indicate their reasons for this, in order for the judicial panels that look at asylum requests, to assess whether the safety of available in each case.

If the grounds are not stated, then the panel should have the freedom to provide for itself sources of information on the basis of which it would decide whether the return would be safe, the court’s lawyer said.

In the prevailing number of cases, the EU court complies with the opinion of its chief legal advisor in making the final decision, which should follow in the coming months.

The European Commission is also working on a list of safe countries to offer to facilitate countries wishing to prepare such lists to accelerate the examination of the applications of illegal migrants filed before their authorities.