EU Court Ruling On ‘Safe Countries Of Origin’ Deals Major Blow To Italy’s Offshore Asylum Policy

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)’s August 1 ruling, relating to the safe country of origin concept, has dealt a heavy blow to Italy’s migration management policy whereby Rome has been processing asylum claims offshore, in detention camps in the Balkan state of Albania.

The Luxembourg court ruled that Italy, a founding member of the EU and a frontline state that has carried a disproportionate burden from millions of migrant inflows into the continent, was in breach of the 27-member bloc’s legal prohibition against the designation of countries as safe, unless the protection of human rights was guaranteed to the entirety of their population.

Underscoring the principle of non-refoulement, in a separate decision in October 2024, the CJEU was explicit that the designation of a third country as safe in itself did not constitute a ground to reject an asylum application when it had been established that the said applicant will not be allowed to enter its territory.

Conversely, Italy’s far-right government of Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party had determined that, with certain exceptions, Bangladesh was a safe country and that, accordingly, the asylum-seekers in question—petitioners in the instant case—could be returned.

Meloni and Matteo Salvini, deputy premier from the extreme right League party, have predictably lambasted the judgement as interference from the EU, undermining national sovereignty and Rome’s efforts to curb illegal migration.

On the other hand, Amnesty International, the rights group, has described Italy as a “trailblazer for the externalisation of border control” following the 2023 agreement with Albania. The organisation has extensively documented the country and the EU’s collusion with the Libyan and Tunisian authorities to indefinitely detain Europe-bound refugees from Sub-Saharan Africa.

The CJEU verdict underlines the extent to which the refugee policies pursued by European capitals are at variance with domestic and international law. A Berlin court in June struck down Germany’s new policy of rejecting at the national border asylum-seekers from safe third countries—invoking the extreme option to suspend union law on grounds of threat to public order—as incompatible with the EU’s Dublin III Regulation.

The latter requires asylum claims to be processed precisely in the state where the refugees first set foot. Given its geographic location, Berlin is obliged to undertake a case-by-case assessment to determine their exact point of entry and transfer refugees to the relevant country.

Amid this scenario, questions hang over the bloc’s 2024 Pact on Asylum and Migration, which aims to streamline procedures and will enter into force next year. Scores of rights groups have denounced the deal—notably the provision to send refugees to non-EU countries—as detrimental to the hundreds of thousands escaping the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. Europe’s far-right and populist parties see it as a licence for human smugglers.