Govt to carry on with Albania plan-interior ministry sources

(ANSA) - ROME, FEB 1 - The government will continue to fight irregular immigration by proceeding with its plan to process asylum applications in Albania as part of a scheme to create regional hubs that is backed by European partners, sources close to the interior ministry said on Saturday.
    "The government will move forward in the conviction that the fight against irregular immigration, which takes advantage of the instrumental use of asylum requests, is the road to pursue to fight the affairs of ruthless traffickers", said the sources.
    The protocol between Rome and Tirana for the fast-track processing of asylum requests at Italian-run centres in Albania "is the starting point for the creation of real regional hubs on which there is full agreement with European ministers", the sources also noted.
    The sources went on to say that at a Home Affairs Council held in Warsaw this week, "the position of Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi was widely shared by the colleagues present.
    "European partners, in full agreement with the Commission, are thinking about strengthening EU rules that support border procedures also applied in Albania, not only by moving up the entry into force of the pact's rules but also through innovative solutions".
    "The same documents discussed in Warsaw explicitly refer to the Italy-Albania Protocol as a valid example of innovative cooperation with a third country", the sources noted.
    The new migration and asylum pact comes into force in 2026.
    A coast guard ship on Saturday was taking back to Italy from Albania 43 migrants after a Rome appeals court did not validate their detention in the country under a scheme that has so far been stymied by the courts.
    Under the government's plan, when up to speed the Albanian centres are set to process around 3,000 migrants a month.
    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has hailed the accord as a possible model for other countries, and there have been several expressions of interest.
    Meanwhile, speaking about previous court rulings on the detention of asylum seekers at fast-track processing centres, in Albania and in Italy, the interior ministry sources said the current case law was short sighted and "set to be overtaken by events, given that appeals courts choose to refer (cases) to the European Court of Justice, substantially to gain time, when it is a system already provided for by the new European Pact on Migration and Asylum that will come into force in 2026 at the latest". Rome's appeals court on Friday night said that the decree approved by the government in December listing 19 safe countries for repatriation does not mention whether all categories of people are safeguarded and fails to include "specific sources of information on the condition of the countries included in the list", according to judicial sources.
    Therefore, the appeals judges said that, "regarding the social and political conditions of the countries" involved, they needed to consider the "information available and used for the previous interministerial decree of May 7 2024" that was replaced by the new decree approved in December.
    Such information source, they said, reported that security conditions in Bangladesh and Egypt, the countries of provenance of the asylum seekers taken to Albania, "were not respected for all categories of people", such as members of the Lgbtqi+ community, victims of gender-based violence, including genital mutilation, ethnic and religious minorities, members of the political opposition and people sentenced to death.
    Given the "different interpretation" of European and Italian legislation on what constitutes a safe countries, the Rome magistrates referred the case to the European Court of Justice, which is expected to rule on the issue on February 25. (ANSA).