After years of fruitless discussions and aborted plans in the European Union, one country—Italy—has recently begun to process irregular migrants’ asylum claims in a third country for the first time. Or, to be more exact, it tried to do so.
Italy’s right-wing prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who campaigned on an anti-immigration platform that included a naval blockade to stop immigration from North Africa, agreed with Albania last November to send some asylum-seekers to the Balkan country and process their asylum requests there.
Two recent attempts to ferry visa-less migrants rescued in the Mediterranean to Albania and fast-track their repatriation failed twice after Italian magistrates questioned the legality of Meloni’s landmark initiative. After getting two Albanian facilities ready for the purpose and staffing them with Italian personnel, in mid-October Rome sent there a group of 16 migrants it rescued in international waters while they attempted to cross the Mediterranean to reach Italy’s southern shores.
Under the so-called Italy-Albania protocol, Italy can ferry the migrants to Albania only if it considers their country of origin as safe and they aren’t minors, pregnant women, or other vulnerable people. However, an Italian court ruled that the migrants, who were from Egypt and Bangladesh, had to be transported to Italy within days because they could not be considered as coming from a safe country. An additional legal hurdle emerged for four of them because they either declared themselves as minors or had health problems.
Meloni’s government responded by approving by decree a list of 19 countries deemed safe for return, designating both Egypt and Bangladesh as free of danger. In November, Italian authorities sent a second group of eight Egyptian and Bangladeshi men (one of whom was found to be vulnerable and returned to Italy) to Albania, but the court again rejected the shipment. This time, it also asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to weigh in and clarify whether Italian law, in particular Rome’s recent designation of those 19 countries as safe for quick repatriation, is compatible with EU law, leaving the whole scheme in a legal limbo.
The court’s decisions sparked a loud rout between the Italian judiciary and government. Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the decree “provides a standard” for judges to follow, rather than indulging in a “wavering interpretation” of the EU judgment.
Meloni denounced the decision to transport the migrants to Italy from Albania, calling it prejudiced, while Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said it was “abnormal” for judges to establish which countries could be deemed safe. Elon Musk, who is a friend of Meloni, weighed in the spat, writing on X after the second court decision that “[t]hese judges need to go” and doubling down later on by asking: “Do the people of Italy live in a democracy or does an unelected autocracy make the decisions?”
In a highly unusual response to Musk, Italy’s widely respected head of state, Sergio Mattarella, said the country “knows how to take care of itself.”
At the heart of the controversy lies an October ruling by the ECJ, which stated that no country of origin could be declared safe unless its entire territory was considered free of danger. The ruling referred to a Czech case but is applicable across the whole EU, prevailing over national legislation. Italian judges said they are forced to follow EU law and not apply Italian law if it conflicts with the bloc’s legislation. The Italian government appealed to the country’s Supreme Court to nullify the judges’ rejections. Its decision is expected in December.
However, the final word is likely to remain with the ECJ, according to legal experts, which in turn could take months to clarify whether Italy is able to fast-track irregular migrants’ repatriation in Albania.
The spat between the Italian government and the judiciary is casting doubts over the viability of the policy, which had attracted interest and praise from other European countries, as a way to deter illegal immigration to the continent.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen championed the Italian initiative, urging the bloc’s 27 leaders ahead of a summit in October to consider the possibility of creating repatriation hubs outside the EU, drawing “lessons from the Italy-Albania protocol.” At the summit, the leaders then committed to explore “innovative solutions” to fight against illegal immigration.
A debate at the European Parliament in late October showed that moderate, conservative, and right-wing politicians, who are in favor of a major clampdown on illegal immigration, tend to support the plan. In contrast, the socialists said it represents a violation of both EU and international law, the Greens branded the hubs as Guantánamo-style concentration camps, and the liberals said it is an expensive and ineffective model.
This year, the EU passed the long-stalled Migration and Asylum Pact, designed to accelerate the repatriation of failed asylum-seekers and distribute the burden of hosting migrants and refugees among member states. The agreement, which is the latest attempt by the EU to manage and normalize migration flows into the continent, will come into force in June 2026.
Individual EU countries have mulled similar plans to Meloni’s to deter the arrival of irregular migrants in their countries. Germany, which accounts for around a third of asylum applications in the EU, will assess options for processing in third countries in December. The country’s conservatives, who are likely to win next year’s federal elections, have already signaled that they would support such deals.
A different, more radical plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda by former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was ruled unlawful by the country’s Supreme Court last year. Sunak’s successor, Keir Starmer, dismissed the policy of deporting asylum-seekers to the African country as a “gimmick.” However, after meeting with Meloni in September, he hailed Italy’s efforts to tackle illegal immigration, saying the two countries would share intelligence and work more closely together to “smash” the people-smuggling gangs. He added that he was “very interested” in Italy’s agreement with Albania but that he would wait to see the results after it became operational.
Even if legal hurdles were solved, many have criticized the Italy-Albania protocol as very expensive and completely ineffective at deterring migrants’ arrivals.
Matteo Villa, a researcher at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies in Milan, estimated that the cost of processing one migrant application in Albania, if the centers there ran at their full capacity of 10,500 asylum-seekers a year, is nine times the cost borne by the country if it processed them in Italy.
Given that the Italian government said the plan would cost around 130 million euros (about $137 million) a year and that each Albanian center can host at any one time up to 1,200 people, that translates into a cost per migrant of 297 euros (about $312) a day, Villa estimated, compared with the 33 euros Italy currently spends processing the applications on its soil.
At the same time, Villa concluded that taking as a baseline the arrival of 75,000 irregular migrants in the year to October, that the two centers can take only 10,500 a year, and considering the existing repatriation rates of asylum-seekers whose requests are processed in Italy, the probability of being taken to Albania and then repatriated is less than 2 percent.
“What governments should rather do is to work to increase their ability to repatriate the migrants, wherever they process their applications. Putting migrants in small centers abroad could only make it appear that there are less arrivals for a short period of time, but then almost all the migrants would end up in Italy,” Villa told Foreign Policy. “To make external return hubs work, governments would need to strike very strong agreements with third countries to be able to build a high number of these centers. This would enable Europe to show irregular migrants that if they try to enter illegally, they will systematically end up there and then repatriated.”
Villa added that individual countries have little leverage to negotiate with the countries of origin besides offering financial help to these countries in exchange for taking back the migrants. If the EU were to negotiate with these countries as a bloc, then European nations would be able to achieve better results, he added.
In the past decade, the EU was able to curb flows from specific countries of departure through agreements involving aid. Migration has also changed since 2015, when the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan led to an influx of people fleeing those conflicts. With the notable exception of Ukrainian refugees, many now mostly hail from poor countries in search for a better life, with ruthless organizations of smugglers assuring them that it would be easy to get into Europe.
In 2016, the EU struck a deal with Turkey; the hefty aid package to the country was successful at preventing migrants from crossing into the EU. Migrants shifted to the more dangerous route from Libya to Italy. Another EU deal, giving boats and equipment to the infamous Libyan Coast Guard, helped reduce that flow. More recently, an accord with Tunisia, brokered by Meloni and von der Leyen, curbed departures from the North African country.
These deals attracted widespread criticism by human rights organizations and have been shaky at times but overall helped reduce the flows. Yearly irregular migrants’ arrivals dropped from around 390,000 in 2016 to 100,000 in 2020, according to the International Organization for Migration. Then they began rising again each year, up to 293,000 in 2023. Until November this year, Europe registered 189,000 arrivals.
Meanwhile, the populations of many European countries have kept on aging and shrinking, posing a host of problems, such as the sustainability of public pension systems and the shortage of personnel in the industrial and agricultural sectors. For instance, the research center of Italy’s industrial lobby Confindustria said in October that Italy needs roughly 120,000 foreign workers a year up to 2028 to achieve the economic growth forecasts for the period.
“The problem could be partially addressed by building programs through which the skills and profiles of qualified prospective migrants are screened to see how they can be matched with the needs of European employers,” said Salvatore Petronella, a migration specialist at the Washington-based Labor Mobility Partnerships. “Centers for training and employment can be created outside of the EU but not confused with rejection centers, which would be costly and of little use.”
Some European countries such as Germany have begun to warm up to the idea and are integrating increasing numbers of migrants into their workforce, by investing in sponsorships and training abroad. These programs tend also to help the countries of origins of migrants, as normally part of the salaries these workers earn in Europe is sent back as remittances and the migrants acquire skills that can be used in their home countries at a later stage.
Still, the prevailing European approach seems to be to stop the flows at any cost and to fast-track repatriations. To this end, external return hubs may be seen as a tool, provided that the EU manages to operate them in a host of different third countries. At this stage, however, the Italian experience is far from encouraging.
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