By Angelo Amante
ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s government was set to adopt on Monday a decree aimed at overruling court objections to its flagship plan to set up migrant detention camps in Albania to deter sea arrivals from North Africa.
The plan, launched last week, was immediately undermined as a Rome court said on Friday the first batch of migrants brought to Albania had to be taken to Italy because their countries of origin – Egypt and Bangladesh – could not be considered safe.
The ruling called into question the entire Italian project to offshore migrant reception centres to a non-EU state, and sparked a fierce row between Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s rightist administration and the judiciary.
The court based its verdict on a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on a case involving the Czech Republic, which said a country outside the EU cannot be declared safe unless its entire territory is deemed free of danger.
In response, the Italian government plans to upgrade the legal status of its own list of safe countries, which includes Egypt and Bangladesh and 20 more nations, a source close to the matter said, adding the decree was still subject to change.
The list would be included in an act of law, rather than a lower-classed ministerial decree as it is at present.
The decision is due for approval at a cabinet meeting scheduled for 1600 GMT. However, it is unclear whether it will be effective.
Salvatore Curreri, a constitutional law professor at Enna Kore University, doubted that the proposed solution would prevent judges from again rejecting requests to detain migrants in Albania.
“The conflict with the European law – which is superior to the national legislation – remains … unless Italy wants to say European sources are not binding on this matter,” he told Reuters.
Italy’s Albania plan, which evoked comparisons with Britain’s aborted scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, was last week highlighted as a possible model for other EU nations by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The scheme was inaugurated last week as 16 migrants landed in Albania on Wednesday. Four were taken to Italy within hours because they were underage or because they were unwell, and the remaining 12 followed them after the Rome court ruling.
(Reporting by Angelo Amante, editing by Alvise Armellini and Susan Fenton)
