(Bloomberg) -- Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government is pushing through new legislation to salvage its controversial plan to curb undocumented migration, after a court blocked a project to divert asylum seekers to Albania.
The cabinet approved a decree listing 19 “safe countries” of origin that will allow the plan to move ahead, officials told reporters on Monday. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the list will remove “room for wavering interpretation” from the courts.
The safe countries include Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia, according to a statement published late Monday. It’s unclear whether Albania’s inclusion on the list will affect the plan to transfer asylum seekers there.
Meloni’s right-wing government has pinned its migration policy on rerouting some asylum seekers to a new hub in Albania where claims can be processed.
But the policy ran into trouble last week when a court in Rome ruled that an initial group of 12 migrants must be returned to Italy since they originate from countries that could not be recognized as safe based on a European Union ruling.
Italy has repeatedly said the transfer of migrants to processing centers in non-EU member Albania is in line with the bloc’s rules.
“Judges can’t ignore the law,” Justice Minister Carlo Nordio told reporters on Monday, without saying when transfers Albania could resume.
Under a 2023 deal, Albania agreed to receive thousands of migrants intercepted in international waters at two asylum processing centers on its territory.
The Italian policy has drawn interest from other EU countries in the face of rising anti-immigrant sentiment across the bloc.
But it’s also been criticized by Italy’s opposition and by international organizations as overly costly and ineffective in stemming crossings of the Mediterranean.
Earlier on Monday, Meloni said her government would continue to defend the country’s borders and that “entry into Italy can only take place legally, following rules and procedures in place.”
Meloni, 47, made tackling undocumented migration a keystone of her Brothers of Italy party’s successful 2022 national election campaign.
While the number of migrants arriving in Italy by sea surged during her first year in office, there’s been a significant decline over the past year, partly due to deals signed or renewed with north African countries including Tunisia.
--With assistance from Antonio Vanuzzo and Giovanni Salzano.
(Updates with countries named on safe country list from third paragraph.)
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