Italian judges on Friday again denied the government’s request to hold asylum seekers in Albania while their cases are being processed, dealing another major setback to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s anti-immigration policy.
It was the third ruling against the policy since Ms. Meloni’s right-wing government began carrying out the plan in October, which has become a flagship of her administration. The decision by a court of appeals in Rome denied the government’s request to keep the asylum seekers off shore pending a review of the practice in February by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The decision concerned 43 migrants who were taken on Tuesday by the Italian Navy to centers in Albania after they were intercepted in the Mediterranean Sea.
A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said that in the wake of the judges’ ruling, the migrants would be taken to Italy. The Italian government did not immediately respond publicly to the ruling.
Italy began taking groups of migrants to Albania in October with the aim of housing them in Italian-built detention centers while their asylum claims were expedited. Under the program, only “non-vulnerable” men coming from what the government called “safe countries” were to be taken to the centers. Women and minors are allowed into Italy.
The Italian government has said its plan would deter undocumented immigrants from making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean to reach Italian shores. But human rights groups condemned the plan, and the Italian political opposition denounced it as illegal and overly expensive.
Other countries have looked to Italy’s plan for dealing with asylum seekers as a potential model, but its viability appears increasingly uncertain.
The judges’ decision on Friday comes as Ms. Meloni’s government is embroiled in another legal dispute over Italy’s release of a Libyan man whom the International Criminal Court has accused of war crimes, and it would most likely escalate her ongoing conflict with Italy’s judiciary over immigration.
After two initial rulings last year against its asylum plan, the Italian government tried to get around the legal hurdles, including by removing the cases from the jurisdiction of the judges in an immigration court in Rome who had ruled against the initial transfers.
In October and November, judges in Rome said that because of a recent decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union, the migrants transferred did not meet the criteria for detention in Albania. The home countries of those migrants — Egypt and Bangladesh — could not be considered safe, the judges said.
The migrants were then brought to Italy to be processed.
Ms. Meloni, who has made the fight against illegal immigration a political priority, promised she would work day and night to carry out the asylum transfers and to get around the Italian courts’ rulings.
So she restarted the program before the case could be heard by the European court, and her government drafted a new list of countries it deemed safe.
Now, the E.U.’s Court of Justice is set to hear the case. Among the issues the Italian judges have asked the court to clarify: Who determines what is a safe country?
