Tribunal refers Albania migrant case to EU court

Rome judges suspend detention's validation

By: ansa.it

Nov 11 2024
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Tribunal refers Albania migran

The immigration section of Rome's tribunal on Monday referred the case concerning a second group of migrants taken to a new Italian-run centre in Albania to the European Court of Justice, suspending the validation of their detention.
    The Rome court suspended judgement on the validation request pending the ruling of the European Court of Justice.
    The seven migrants, who are citizens of Egypt and Bangladesh, will need to leave the centre of Gjader, in Albania, once the deadline to validate their detention expires in 48 hours.
    The Libra Navy vessel that took them to Albania will now need to take them back to Italy.
    On October 18, the same court failed to validate the detention of 12 migrants who were part of the first group to be taken to Albania under the government's controversial agreement to run migrant-centres on Albanian territory.
    The court at the time rejected the migrants' detention on the grounds that their countries of provenance, Bangladesh and Egypt, could not be considered wholly safe, based on an October 4 sentence of the European Court of Justice.
    The government has since passed a measure setting a list of 19 safe countries for repatriation, including Bangladesh and Egypt, in order to overcome the legal hurdle to the agreement being applied, saying courts needed to rule based on the decree rather than on the European Court of Justice's sentence.
    However the Rome court on Monday said in a note issued after its decision on the new case that the "criteria for the designation of a State as a safe country of origin are laid out by European Union law" with the judge having the "duty to always and concretely verify" the "correct implementation of the Union's law, which, notoriously, prevails over national law when it is incompatible with it, as also provided for by the Italian Constitution".
    The note added that the designation of a country as safe "is relevant only to identify the procedures to be implemented" in a specific case and does "not prevent the repatriation and/or the expulsion of the migrant person whose asylum request has been rejected or that does not have the legal requirements to stay in Italy".