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".
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