Italy’s government has launched a fierce rebuke of a new European Union court ruling on asylum policy, warning that the decision undermines national efforts to tackle illegal immigration and defend its borders.
In a highly charged statement on Friday, officials in Rome criticized the European Court of Justice’s latest judgment, which places tighter limits on how EU countries can process and reject asylum seekers from so-called “safe” countries. While the Court upheld the principle that member states can accelerate deportation procedures for migrants arriving from such nations, it demanded stronger safeguards, judicial oversight, and the right for migrants to challenge their “safe country” designation in court.
“The decision weakens policies to combat mass illegal immigration and defend national borders,” Italy’s government declared in an official statement from the prime minister’s office, adding that it “further reduces the already narrow margins of autonomy of governments and parliaments to control migration.”
The judgment strikes at the heart of Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni’s approach, which has relied on rapidly processing asylum claims and swiftly returning migrants often using recently established facilities in neighboring Albania. Italy considers countries such as Bangladesh as “safe” for returns and has used expedited procedures for such cases. However, the EU court maintained that any such designation should be subject to independent judicial scrutiny and must genuinely offer protection to all vulnerable groups. It also underscored that a country cannot simply be labeled “safe” if it does not guarantee safety for its entire population.
This decision follows months of legal and political wrangling over whether Italy’s offshore processing and fast-track return schemes are compatible with EU law. Italian courts themselves had asked for a ruling on cases where nationals from Bangladesh were sent to Albania for speedy assessment of their claims and found that such policies “illegally deprive migrants of assistance with asylum claims.”
READ ALSO: G7 ministers gather in Italy for Middle East, Ukraine crisis talks
Prime Minister Meloni’s government has characterized the latest intervention from Luxembourg as an unacceptable intrusion. “Italy’s migration policy is the purview of the executive and legislative branches and shouldn’t be subject to judicial review,” her office said.
The ruling reignited the debate over national sovereignty versus EU-wide standards on migration and sparked criticism from other nationalist and right-leaning parties across Europe.
Opposition politicians and human rights groups, by contrast, have welcomed the ruling. They argue that Italy’s system was eroding migrant rights and due process standards by using “safe country” lists too broadly and imposing blanket returns, regardless of individual risks.
The Court also sent a clear message to other EU countries using similar fast-track asylum systems, making it clear that basic rights for asylum seekers such as meaningful access to appeals and individual assessment must be preserved, even in periods of high migration pressure.
The fallout from the decision is expected to trigger further debate both in Rome and Brussels as governments wrestle with balancing border control and humanitarian obligations.
NAN
