New chapter in the fight between justice and the Italian government over the plan to send migrants rescued in the Mediterranean to detention centers in Albania. The judges of the Court of Bologna decided to bring before the Court of Justice of the European Union the decree by which the Executive led by Giorgia Meloni wanted to save the plan by establishing by law the list of “safe countries” from which the migrants come and to which, in the intentions of the Government, can be returned.
The judges in Bologna are asking the European Court to decide whether the decree should be applied or not because they believe that the criteria used by the government to designate a country as safe “contravene” European law. The judges’ resolution, reported by the Italian newspaper Corriere de la Sera This is a new setback in the path of this experiment in border externalization launched by the Meloni government.
The decree-law – of higher rank than the ministerial decree in force until now – approved last week establishes a list of “safe countries” to circumvent the veto opposed by the judges of the Court of Rome who refused to ratify the detention of the first 12 migrants in centers built by Italy on Albanian soil.
The judges relied on a recent ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union which, on October 4, ruled that a country can only be considered safe if it is truly safe in its entirety. A definition that eliminates de facto from the list to several countries, including Tunisia, Egypt and Bangladesh. The latter two were the states of origin of the 16 migrants initially deported to Albania, before, a few hours after their disembarkation, four of them had to be returned to Italy, two because they were minors and two because that they were considered “vulnerable”.
With this judgment, the judges in Rome call into question one of the pillars of the operational protocol signed a year ago by Italy and Albania for the opening of centers in the Albanian towns of Gjader and Shengjin: only rescued adult men must be sent there. . by Italian authorities in the Mediterranean from countries considered safe. And, according to the government, the decree-law, which reduces the number of “safe countries” from 22 to 19, would serve to protect the plan.
The origin of “safe third countries” allows the application of an accelerated procedure for examining asylum applications, which reduces the time for first assessment to 28 days and reduces the appeal time in the event of first rejection to seven . . by the competent commissions which, in the case of migrants deported to Albania, manage the procedures by videoconference.
Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said the decree-law, which reduces the number of “safe countries” from 22 to 19, would serve to avoid other convictions like those of the Rome Tribunal which he described as “abnormal”, in statements by the opposition that demanded his resignation. “If the justice system is overwhelmed, we must intervene,” Nordio said.
His words were the prelude to days of verbal offensive by several government representatives against “politicized justice” and “red dresses”, with tones that recall the eternal struggle between justice and Silvio Berlusconi. And in this climate of tension, last Thursday, judge Silvia Albano, one of the members of the Rome court who spoke out against the retention of immigrants in Albania, received death threats.
The judges’ doubts
“The system of international protection is, by its very nature, a system of legal guarantee for minorities exposed to risks from agents of persecution,” write the Bologna judges in the resolution sent to the European Court, published by THE Corriere. “Except in exceptional cases (borderline cases of Romania under the Ceausescu regime or Cambodia of Pol Pot, perhaps), persecution is always the majority against certain minorities, sometimes very small. It could be said, paradoxically, that Germany under the Nazi regime was an extremely safe country for the vast majority of the German population: in addition to Jews, homosexuals, political opponents, Roma and other minority groups, more than 60 million Germans benefited from an enviable situation. security state. The same can be said of Italy under the fascist regime. If a country were considered safe when security is guaranteed for the general population, the legal concept of safe country of origin could apply to almost all countries in the world, which would therefore be a concept devoid of any legal coherence, conclude the judges.
