Meloni's Albania migrant plan in RUINS as asylum seekers sent back to Italy
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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been dealt a blow over her migrant plan scheme after judges halted the incarceration of seven migrants.
Last November, Meloni’s government signed a protocol with Albania to open two asylum centres in the nearby Balkan country.
However, Italian judges have now halted the incarceration of seven migrants, five from Bangladesh and two from Egypt, referring their case to the EU’s court of justice.
The seven men had been intercepted as they sailed from North Africa to Italy and were due to be detained in Albania before facing a rapid 28-day processing and likely repatriation.
Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni gestures next to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
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A drone view of Italian navy ship Libra carrying migrants arriving in Albania, as part of a deal with Italy to process thousands of asylum-seekers caught near Italian waters
Reuters
The group had been sent to the Gjadër centre with an eighth Egyptian man who was deemed too "vulnerable" to remain at the facility.
After the latest ruling the remaining seven men, who were the only ones staying at the centre, will now be dispatched to Italy and released while their case is disputed by the EU court in Luxembourg.
The judges said "the doubts over the compatibility between Italian law and the rights of the Union are manifest,” adding the EU court needed to rule on the matter “as soon as possible”.
Meloni’s legal wrangling over the Albania centre is reminiscent of the court challenges to the UK’s ill-fated plan to dispatch migrants to Rwanda under the previous Conservative Government.
Italian deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who has referred to the Italian judges ruling against the scheme as "communists", said: "Another political sentence which is not against the government, but against Italians and their security.
"The government and parliament have the right to act to protect citizens, and they will."
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Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban
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Meloni has been under the watchful eye of other EU countries as other countries become tempted to follow suit as voters become increasingly hostile to illegal migration.
The group was the first to be sent to the €670million centre north of Tirana, set up thanks to a deal with the Albanian government, which Meloni promised would be able to process 3,000 migrants a month.
A decree allowed them to be held at the holding centre in Albania rather than in Italy where processing can take months, during which migrants normally have freedom of movement.
However, last month, judges ruling on the first group cited an EU Court of Justice ruling that a safe country of origin must be safe across all, not just some of its territory. Bangladesh and Egypt were not totally safe, they argued.
Migrants disembark from the Italian navy ship Libra carrying migrants that arrived in Albania as part of a deal with Italy
Reuters
It comes as voters in Italy are becoming increasingly concerned that Meloni's hard-right government is not working hard enough to bring down migration numbers.
Last week, train drivers staged two national strikes in protest after a ticket inspector was stabbed and seriously injured by a 21-year-old Egyptian immigrant who was travelling without a ticket near Genoa.
Supporters of the government said lax border controls meant the country was importing insecurity from abroad.
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