Italy: Meloni vows to do everything she can to make Albania plan work

Rome: Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has vowed to continue her policy to send certain irregular migrants intercepted at sea to purpose-built camps in Albania even while facing opposition from the judiciary.

Italy’s right-wing government, under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is devoted to making its Albania plan work after investing hundreds of millions of euros into two purpose-built facilities in the Balkan nation, which effectively have been standing unoccupied for six months now.

Up until now, each time a small contingent of migrants was sent to the asylum centers in Albania, judicial decisions, needed to continue the migrants’ asylum process in Albania, have meant that the Italian authorities were forced to transport the migrants back to Italy to start their asylum processes there. The most recent judgment to this end came only last month.

The Italian prime minister, however, remains confident that her scheme will work: “The government is determined to carry forward the Italy-Albania protocol. We are committed to finding a solution to every obstacle,” Meloni most recently said at a gathering of senior police officers. “Citizens are asking us to stop illegal immigration because it causes insecurity, lack of integration and an inability to guarantee the rule of law,” she added in her speech.

The judges involved in the Albanian processes so far have based their blocking of the Albanian process on a recent ruling issued by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) regarding the safety of countries and their suitability for repatriations.

Currently, Italy takes migrants who are intercepted at sea to Albania if at face value they have little chance of suceeding with their asylum claim. To this end, it compares the migrants’ nationality to its own list of countries of origins that are deemed to be safe.

That ECJ ruling, however, stipulates that repatriating irregular migrants and failed asylum seekers to countries that might not be safe is against EU law — this is a particular problem to countries where much of the country might be safe, but if some parts are not considered safe, it calls into question the possibility of repatriating to that country at all.

Meloni meanwhile remains optimistic that the ECJ judgment won’t cover the procedures in Albania, since — technically — those taken there are still given a chance to apply for asylum under EU law.

“The hope is that the ECJ will avert the risk of jeopardising the repatriation policies not only of Italy, but of all EU member states,” she said, alluding to apparent mismatches between EU law and practised national EU law elsewhere in the bloc:

Meloni said that “the argument of the supremacy of European law over Italian law, on the basis of which Italian law on safe countries could not be applied, appears fragile,” given that Germany “repatriates to Afghanistan without this being considered by German judges to be in conflict with European law.”

She did not mention, however, that this is only applied in Germany in cases where an Afghan asylum seeker is deemed to be a danger to society and life in Germany, as is the case for example with Islamists or supporters of the Taliban regime.

The ECJ meanwhile has announced that it will revisit this ruling and further clarify its position and interpretation of it later in February.

Meloni’s remarks about this case come in the context of a wider disconnect between the right-wing governning coalition and what they see as politicized judges. A charge the judiciary firmly denies.

Some members of the government have gone as far as accusing the judges of sabotaging the government’s migration policies, and have begun tabling reforms they hope might weaken certain judicial powers.

Some recent opinion polls have appeared to show that a relative majority of voters in Italy are in support of reforming Italy’s judicial system over all, with support coming from various parts of the political spectrum.

Many view Italy’s slow legal system as antiquated; according to government data from 2022, it takes four times the European average to reach a definitive and final ruling in most cases, especially civil cases, with criminal cases faring just a bit better.

“Basically, they [the judges] want to govern themselves. But there’s a problem. If I make a mistake, the Italians can vote me out of office. If they make a mistake, no one can say or do anything. No power in a democratic state works like that,” Meloni told a private Italian TV channel in late January.

Previous governments have also tried to improve the efficiency of the courts.

Former late Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi tried to address these problems by suggesting an overhaul of the judiciary on multiple occasions.

His attempts ultimately failed though, as Berlusconi was seen as benefitting too much personally from a weaker prosecution in the country, with dozens of law suits linked to the media mogul up until his death in 2023.

Meloni is now seen by opponents of judiciary reforms as finishing what Berlusconi started. Meloni got her first positions in government under Berlusconi’s leadership, and some have said that he could be considered one of her political mentors. Without any apparent conflict of interest plaguing her, many believe that she might just succeed.

Italy’s judges meanwhile have called a strike to be held on February 27 to protest against these proposed changes.

Some involved in the migration decisions have even said they have received death threats after being deemed to have openly opposed government policy and blocked migrants from being taken to Albania.

To some onlookers, migrants appear to have become mere pawns in a wider stand-off between the government and the judiciary.

Andrea Delmastro Delle Vedove, an undersecretary at the Justice Ministry and also member of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, believes that judges and magistrates in Italy are doing whatever they can to sabotage the reform.

“It seems blatantly obvious to me that this is the case,” he said.

But the judiciary are not taking the criticism lying down.

One prosecutor launched an investigation against Prime Minister Meloni and three of her cabinet colleagues. The docket against Meloni and her colleagues questions the government’s decision to release Libyan police chief and warlord Osama al-Masri from detention in January. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for torturing and murdering migrants.

The issue of judiciary reform meanwhile is likely to dominate Italian politics for months to come: The reform bill has already been approved by the Chamber of Deputies, Italy’s lower house of parliament, and has to now go before the Senate.

Because it involves a changing of Italy’s constitution, there are additional steps involved, which are likely to take the majority of the year.

First, it needs two readings in both chambers before being presented to the Senate for approval. Following that, it is expected the final version would then be put to a referendum.

One Supreme Court prosecutor, Marco Patarnello, said in a leaked message that public opinion was no longer behind the country’s magistrates, unlike in the 1990s, when judges were seen by the public to be risking their lives to fight organized crime perpetuated by various branches of the Mafia.

Paternallo added in that memo that Meloni was a “far more dangerous” adversary for the judiciary than Berlusconi ever was because she is not mired in legal investigations and is therefore seen as someone who is acting on the basis of her own “political vision.”

This vision, according to quotes attributed to Meloni in La Stampa newspaper, compare her efforts to “control mass irregular migration,” with fighting “against all the mafia.

With Meloni’s popularity at an all-time high and the judiciary’s support waning, it is likely that she might ultimately succeed in this particular mission, and that this in turn could spell the relaunch of the Albania plan later in the year.