Italy’s much-debated program of sending asylum seekers to Albania restarted on Sunday, the Italian Interior Ministry said, months after judges blocked the first transfers there.
An Italian Navy vessel was carrying 49 people to centers Italy built in Albania, the ministry said. A ministry spokeswoman added that those being transferred had been intercepted at sea before they reached Italy.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy has made the idea of holding new asylum seekers outside the country for assessment a flagship policy of her administration, describing it as an innovative way to fight illegal immigration and to deter migrants from taking risky boat trips across the Mediterranean.
Ms. Meloni restarted the program after she removed the case from the jurisdiction of the judges in Rome who had ruled against the initial transfers. That ruling cast doubt on the future of the program. Those judges said that the 12 migrants that Italy had sent to Albania in October were ineligible for the program because the countries they came from, Bangladesh and Egypt, might not be considered safe.
Since then, Ms. Meloni’s government also drafted a new list of countries it has deemed safe. Officials at the interior ministry did not provide a list of countries where the migrants came from, but said they were from countries considered to be safe.
The plan has attracted condemnation from human rights groups and the Italian opposition, which have denounced it as cruel and overly expensive. But some politicians across Europe, including from mainstream parties, see it as a potential model for migration policy at a time when anti-immigrant sentiment is increasingly widespread. The president of the European Union’s executive arm, Ursula von der Leyen, called it “an example of out-of-the-box thinking, based on fair sharing of responsibilities with third countries.”
The decision by the judges in Rome to stop the transfers started a bitter dispute between Ms. Meloni and the Italian judiciary. Italian judges, including the judges in Rome, have asked the European Court of Justice to clarify, among other issues, who determines what a safe country is. That court is expected to hear the case next month.
In Italy, the question of who can be shipped to Albania has now been transferred to a court of appeals in Rome.
While the outcome of the attempt to revive the policy remains uncertain, Ms. Meloni has made clear that she intends to push it through one way or another.
“Trust me, the centers in Albania will work,” she said last month at her party’s gathering in Rome. “Even if I will have to spend every night on the case, from now to the end of this Italian government.”
Elisabetta Povoledo contributed reporting.
