The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, returns to the fray with a third attempt to deport migrants rescued in the Mediterranean to Albania, after the failure of the previous two, annulled by judges, and bad weather. The Gjäder detention center was closed and the staff sent home, but now the favorable climate has increased arrivals to the island of Lampedusa and, although the legal context has barely changed, the far-right Government has decided to give another fight to the courts.
Meloni did not want to wait for the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) to decide in February between the Italian Executive and the judges, before . In principle, little has changed so that the outcome is not , but in the meantime Meloni can continue exploiting the propaganda effect of expelling immigrants and then blaming the judges for opposing the popular will.
The military ship CassiopeiaAccording to the Italian Ministry of the Interior, It sails this Sunday towards the Albanian port of Shëngjin, where it is expected to dock this Monday or Tuesday. It has 49 migrants on board, the largest group transported so far. They are from Egypt and Bangladesh, the same nationalities of the two previous trips, which caused the judges to reject their transfer, but also from Gambia and Ivory Coast, a novelty.
crazy cost
On the two previous trips, and 8 in November. They all later ended up in Italy. These were tiny figures compared to the 6,000 immigrants who arrived in the country in that period, proof of the difficult viability of the Albania model that the EU follows with interest, in its attempt to toughen the asylum policy. With a crazy cost: the cost per migrant has been 85,600 euros, according to the Italian press, compared to the 35 euros per day cost of reception centers in the country.
The problem is in the requirements that Italy must meet to send a migrant to Albania and remain legally within the system it has devised, a rapid response protocol for asylum requests. It involves deporting, as if they were detained at the border, people who it is presumed that, due to their characteristics, an asylum request will be rejected. Thus, only healthy adult men who come from countries considered safe by Italy and who have been rescued at sea before making landfall are sent to Albania.
Is . Italy has drawn up a list of 19 nations that is being questioned by judges, based on a ruling by the EU Court. That resolution states that if in a country there is an area or a population group with human rights violations, the entire country must be considered unsafe. That is why the judges rejected the deportation of citizens of Bangladesh and Egypt. However, this kills Albania’s deportation plan. The European ruling cuts the Italian list of safe countries to only eight: Cape Verde and seven in the Balkans. That is to say, none of the main countries of origin of illegal immigration in Italy.
The Italian Government argues that it should be decided on a case-by-case basis, not in a general way. Meloni now clings to a recent ruling by the Italian Supreme Court, which established that it is up to the Government to determine whether a country is safe or not, but at the same time admitted the right of the judge to decide in each case. Now we just have to wait and see whether or not this week the Italian courts will respond the same as the other two occasions.
