European countries hoping to mirror Italy’s controversial practice of sending some asylum seekers rescued at sea to overseas deportation centers have been dealt a setback by Europe’s top court.
On Friday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that while Italy could still utilize the centers it runs in the Albanian cities of Shengiin and Gjader, who can be sent there must be more closely examined to ensure that asylum seekers aren’t being sent back to dangerous situations in their home countries.
The court said that a country of origin can only be considered “safe” after it has been “subject to effective judicial review,” and that a country must be demonstrably safe for all its population, including vulnerable or marginalized groups.
The ECJ ruling will almost certainly impact new EU asylum regulations, which are set to take effect next June and are designed to allow member states to create their own “safe” country lists to expedite and outsource the asylum process.
The EU’s own list, meant to be a guide, includes Bangladesh, Columbia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia, despite human rights campaigners warning that those countries aren’t safe for all who live there.
“The proposed EU list of ‘safe countries of origin’ deems certain countries, from which 20% or fewer applicants are granted international protection in the EU, to be safe,” Amnesty International said in a July statement. “However, the fact that up to 20% of those applying for international protection from these countries are recognized as refugees indicates that these places are in fact not safe for all,” it added.
The ECJ ruling – which was based on two Bangladeshi asylum seekers who were detained in Albania but argued returning to Bangladesh was unsafe – comes as several European countries have expressed interest in developing their own deportation schemes like the Italian-Albanian partnership.
While that partnership, a multi-million-euro investment of detention centers and “return hubs” in a non-EU country, has been viewed by some countries as a potential blueprint for success, a recent study by the University of Bari found that the Italian scheme has, so far, cost the country more than €74.2 million (approximately $86 million).
The study called the scheme “the most costly, inhumane, and useless instrument in the history of Italian migration policies.”
Still, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and then European Council president Charles Michel lauded Italy’s 2023 landmark agreement, and in May 2024, the EU established a set of reforms designed to streamline Europe’s approach to managing migration and asylum, particularly around migrants from so-called “safe” countries.
Calling it “fair but firm,” the pact lays out wide-ranging reforms designed to ease the burden on countries that have historically taken the most asylum-seekers among the EU’s 27 member states.
Whether this ECJ ruling will dissuade the development of the detentions hubs remains to be seen.
Italy’s far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni criticized the court’s decision as short sighted, saying that it “weakens policies to combat mass illegal immigration and protect national borders.”
“This is a development that should concern everyone – including the political forces rejoicing today over the ruling – because it further reduces the already limited scope for governments and parliaments to regulate and administer migration,” she said.
Meanwhile, in Italy’s detention centers in Albania, the lives of nearly a dozen people from countries deemed safe, including Egypt and Bangladesh, hang in the balance.
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