The Rome court has not validated the detention of the first group of immigrants in the Gjader center in Albania. The immigration section of the Court of Rome rejected the detention of 12 immigrants in the center built by Italy after its agreement with Albania in 2023. Their order is that they return to Italy. Last Wednesday the corvette Libra of the Italian Military Navy disembarked 16 immigrants rescued on Sunday in the Mediterranean (10 from Bangladesh and 6 from Egypt). Two of them were transferred shortly after to Italy: one because he was a minor and the other due to his very delicate health conditions.
The reason of the judges in Rome was in a certain way predictable, because it was already known that the initiative of the Meloni Government could have some obstacles. The explanation is simple. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs drew up a list of 22 countries considered safe, whose immigrants arriving in Italy will be classified as economic and will be repatriated. But the European Court of Justice ruled, in a ruling on October 4, that a country can only be defined as safe if it is safe in all its parts and for each category of people; Consequently, it has eliminated 15 countries from that Italian list, including Egypt, Tunisia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, territories where most of the shipwrecked people rescued in the Mediterranean come from. The Strasbourg Court considers that these countries are not “safe” for vulnerable minorities such as political opponents or LGBTQI+ communities.
Based on the ruling of the Strasbourg Court, the judges of Rome have ordered the return to Italy of the 12 immigrants held in Albania. This is what the president of the immigration section of the Court of Rome, Luciana Sangiovanni, explained in a press release: “The arrests were not validated in application of the principles binding on national judges and on the administration itself, enunciated by the recent ruling of the CJEU of October 4, 2024. Now those 12 Egyptian and Bangladeshi immigrants will have to undergo the ordinary procedures of immigrants arriving in Italy. These are longer processes and the judges consider that they should not be done in Gjader. The Italian Government’s plan was for immigrants to remain in that Albanian center for 28 days, the time to process asylum applications. Later, those who could not benefit from this right would be repatriated.
For the Italian Prime Minister, Gorgia Meloni, the decision of the Court of Rome represents a first setback in her immigration policy, which is aimed at “continuing to explore innovative solutions”, such as the center of Albania, which Meloni considers to be “a good example” and is followed with interest in Europe. Giorgia Meloni had insisted that her initiative also complied with international jurisdiction. The Meloni Government considers that the measure of the Rome judges is “intimidation.” This is what the League, Vice President Matteo Salvini’s party, has stated in an official note: “Judges who are in favor of immigration should stand for election, but know that we will not be intimidated.”
The opposition parties are happy with the decision of the Rome court. Left leaders had strongly opposed the open center in Albania. The leader of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, stated that “the Meloni government was going to waste 800 million euros [ese es el cálculo total que se ha hecho para cinco años] for the deportation of immigrants to Albania, violating fundamental rights and disregarding a ruling by the European Court of Justice.
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