Albania, Rome court refers migrants to EU court and suspends detention: they will return to Italy
Even for the seven who arrived on board the Libra ship on Friday, the Roman judges did not validate their stay in the Gjader centre. The Viminale will appear before the judges in Luxembourg
6' min read
Key points
- Treatment suspended pending EU Court
- Migrants return to Italy after 48 hours
- Invalidating the list of safe countries by decree
- "Judges must be able to assess: EU law prevails"
- Four Questions to the European Court
- Salvini: 'Another political sentence against Italians and their security'
- Tajani: 'Unacceptable decision, goes against the tripartition of powers'
- Oppositions on the attack: 'No more waste, Piantedosi to report back to the Chamber'
6' min read
Second flop. The immigration section of the civil court of Rome suspended the validation of the detentions in the Albanian centre of Gjader of the seven migrants - two from Egypt and three from Bangladesh - who had arrived in Albania on board the ship Libra on Friday morning. The eighth, an Egyptian, had been immediately sent back to Italy after health screening in the Schengjin hotspot.
Treatments suspended pending the EU Court
.The order to be validated was issued by the Rome Police Headquarters. But the court, repeating in substance the first decision of mid-October with which it gave the red light to the detention of the first 12 migrants in Gjader (four others had immediately returned to Brindisi because they were minors or ill), has once again called a halt, this time waiting for the European Court of Justice to rule on four questions and in general on the validity, under EU law, of the list of safe countries drawn up by Italy, a question already raised in recent days by the tribunal of Bologna. The Catania court, on the other hand, went further, directly disapplying the Law Decree because it was considered incompatible with EU law.
Following 48 hours, migrants return to Italy
."Due to the preliminary reference, the judges did not rule on the requests for validation," reads a note from the court, "but necessarily had to suspend the relevant judgments pending the decision of the Court of Justice. The suspension of the judgments does not stop the passage of the legal term of forty-eight hours for the effectiveness of the detentions ordered by the police". Once the 48 hours have expired, the seven migrants will be taken to the Coast Guard ship Visalli in Brindisi, which they will reach during the night, and will be transferred to a centre for asylum seekers on Apulian territory to undergo the ordinary process of examining their applications for international protection.
Vain the armouring of the list of safe countries by decree law
The decision is bound to exacerbate the clash between the Meloni government and the judiciary. Also because the order came after the approval of the list of safe countries - those where the accelerated procedures at the border can be applied - by decree-law (before, it was stable by inter-ministerial decree). A move with which the executive has tried to armour it after the 4 October ruling with which the Luxembourg judges established that a country can only be classified as secure if this security is guaranteed in a general and uniform manner throughout its territory. The Viminale has already let it be known that it will go before the EU Court to argue its case.
"Judges must be able to assess: EU law prevails"
.In the note issued by the president of the immigration section of the civil court of Rome, Luciana Sangiovanni, it is specified that "the criteria for designating a State as a safe country of origin are established by European Union law. Therefore, without prejudice to the prerogatives of the national legislator, the judge has the duty to always verify in concrete terms - as in any other sector of the legal system - the correct application of EU law, which, as is well known, prevails over national law where incompatible with it, as also provided for by the Italian Constitution'. The note also clarifies that the exclusion of a State from the list of safe countries of origin does not prevent the return or expulsion of those whose asylum application is rejected: it only affects the applicability or otherwise of the accelerated procedures.
