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Within days of the opening of the identification and repatriation areas for illegal immigrants built in Albania, came the pronouncement of the judiciary that immediately forced the return to Italy of the first 16 individuals brought overseas. Immediately, political controversy mounted. On the one hand the oppositions who, in a rather suspicious coincidence, in the same hours asked the European Union to sanction Italy: they attacked the government for the setback suffered by what appears to be an important element in the strategy to make our borders more secure. On the other, the government itself, which has harshly criticized the ruling as unfounded and politically motivated.
Who is right and why? Let us try to understand this by analyzing the ruling of the Rome court.
What the Rome court decree says
The Specialized Section on Personal Rights and Immigration of the Court of Rome did not validate the detention of some Bangladeshi and Egyptian nationals in Albania.
The decrees argue that by allowing the Protocol with Albania the entry and stay of migrants only to carry out border and repatriation procedures, then Legislative Decree No. 25/2008, in Art. 28-bis on expedited procedures must be applied . Expedited procedures consist of an examination of the application for international protection that is carried out more quickly than the ordinary procedure: the Territorial Commission, having received the documentation from the Police Headquarters, provides a hearing within 7 days and decides within the next two days.
This expedited procedure, says again Legislative Decree No. 25/2008, applies only to applicants apprehended after evading or attempting to evade border controls or to applicants coming from countries designated as safe. Since the Protocol with Albania provides that only migrants embarked on Italian vessels outside territorial waters go there, it is the safe countries part that applies. Here we come to the crux of the decision by the judges of the specialized section.
Bangladesh and Egypt as safe countries
First, let's start a digression here. Legislative Decree No. 25/2008, Art. 2-bis, as amended by Decree Law 113/2018, assigned the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in consultation with those of the Interior and Justice, the task of adopting and updating the list of safe countries of origin. The law states that “the designation of a safe country of origin may be made with the exception of parts of the territory or categories of persons”.
On May 7, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, by special decree, added Bangladesh, Cameroon, Colombia, Egypt, Peru and Sri Lanka to the list of safe countries. The decree was made having regard to Memorandum No. MAECI_1311_06/05/2024_0056895-I, in which, in relation to Bangladesh, it is attested that “in a general and constant (uniform) manner” there are no acts of persecution as defined by EU Directive 2011/95 in Article 9, i.e., acts that are "sufficiently serious by [their] nature or repetition as to constitute a severe violation of basic human rights" or constitute "an accumulation of various measures, including violations of human rights"
Under the heading on exceptions, the ministerial record reads as follows:
Cases where there is a real need for international protection are mainly related to membership in the LGBTQI+ community, victims of gender-based violence, including female genital mutilation, ethnic and religious minorities, people accused of politically motivated crimes, and those sentenced to death. Also of note is the growing phenomenon of “climate” displaced persons, forced to leave their homes as a result of extreme weather events.
Instead, Egypt's record notes these exceptions:
Exceptions are deemed necessary for political opponents, dissidents, activists and human rights defenders, or those who may fall under the grounds for persecution set forth in Article 8(1)(e) of Legislative Decree No. 251 of November 19, 2007 [i.e., for political opinion, Ed.]
The ruling of the EU Court of Justice recalled by the Court of Rome
The Rome Specialized Section disputes the definition of Bangladesh and Egypt as safe countries because, in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' record, exceptions are made for certain categories of people. These exceptions, the judges say, do not allow Bangladesh and Egypt to be considered safe, and to support this argument they cite a ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union, in Case C-406/22. A very recent ruling, dating back to last October 4.
The case involved a Moldovan national who had applied for asylum in the Czech Republic. The Moldovan claimed that he had been subjected to heavy harassment after witnessing a car accident in 2015. The Czech Republic had rejected the claim because Moldova is considered a safe country with the exception of a separatist (and de facto independent) region, Transnistria. The European Court interprets European Parliament and Council Directive 2013/32 to mean that a country cannot be designated as safe while applying territorial exceptions to it. According to the Luxembourg courts, in fact, Article 37 of Directive 2013/32 must be interpreted as “precluding a third country from being designated as a safe country of origin where certain parts of its territory do not meet the material conditions for such designation set out in Annex 1 of that directive”.
Annex 1 to the Directive makes these conditions explicit, namely that
on the basis of the legal situation, the application of the law within a democratic system and the general political circumstances, it can be shown that there is generally and consistently no persecution as defined in Article 9 of Directive 2011/95/EU, no torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and no threat by reason of indiscriminate violence in situations of international or internal armed conflict.
It will be noted that the Court excludes a country from being safe if parts of its territory do not meet the above conditions. But the Foreign Ministry, with respect to Bangladesh and Egypt, did not identify territorial exceptions, but rather category exceptions. However, the Rome Tribunal relies on paragraph 68 of the EU Court's judgment - which essentially quotes Annex 1 to Directive 2013/32 - to say that the exclusion of territorial exceptions would also apply to exceptions relating to categories of persons. However, there is no explicit mention of this in paragraph 68.
Why the Rome court's reconstruction is not convincing
It is hard to agree with the Roman judges that s. 68 (and thus Annex 1) really “clarifies” this. The CJEU only explicitly ruled on the exclusion of territorial exceptions. To assert that paragraph 68 of the ruling excludes any other form of exception is at least controversial, not to say erroneous. Thus, to reject designation as a safe country on the basis of the existence of exceptions for categories of persons (exceptions covered by law, as noted above, and not explicitly considered by the CJEU) appears to be an obvious interpretive stretch on the part of the Tribunal.
Since the EU Court's ruling does not mention categories of persons, strictly speaking the Rome specialized section should have raised the question and asked the Court itself whether the principle dictated for the territory also applies to categories of persons. Particularly anomalous is that this did not happen, preferring to take for granted a questionable - to say the least - interpretation of current EU law.
Directive 2013/32 also refers to “general and constant persecution.” Persecution which Directive 2011/95, as noted above, defines as “severe violation of basic human rights.” Severity, persistence and general prevalence are characteristics that would constitute “persecution”; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not see these in the case of Bangladesh and apparently neither did Egypt, and the Rome Tribunal did not adduce any factual evidence to the contrary.
The Tribunal's decree is essentially based on the unfounded denial of exceptions for specific categories, hiding behind a ruling of the Court of Justice that says nothing about it.
How Regulation (EU) 2024/1348 will invalidate the objection of the Tribunal of Rome
Adding to this unpleasant episode, there is also a fact not noted by anyone so far.
Regulation (EU) 2024/1348, signed on May 14, will enter into force on June 12, 2026 and will repeal the existing Directive 2013/32/EU.
Paragraph 2 of Article 61 of the new Regulation reads:
The designation of a third country as a safe country of origin both at Union and national level may be made with exceptions for specific parts of its territory or clearly identifiable categories of persons.
This new regulation (which was approved in the European Parliament thanks in part to the votes of the majority of the Socialists and Democrats Group, albeit with several members of the Italian Democratic Party, which is part of that group, voting against it) now unequivocally highlights the possibility of designating a country as safe even when there are exceptions, making explicit that these exceptions can also apply to categories of people.
This means that, even if one were to take the Rome court's interpretation at face value, the impeding cause it identified for the detention of the Bengalis and Egyptians in Albania will come to an end in just over a year and a half. A time by which the assessment of their applications for protection may not yet have been concluded, should appeals and challenges occur.
Remarks on specialized sections of the courts
Decree Law No. 13 of Feb. 17, 2017, issued by President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella at the proposal of the government then headed by Paolo Gentiloni - thus a legislative measure conceived in the Democratic Party - established the specialized immigration sections in the ordinary courts of Bari, Bologna, Brescia, Cagliari, Catania, Catanzaro, Florence, Lecce, Milan, Palermo, Rome, Naples, Turin and Venice.
As a result, the assessment of international protection disputes has been removed from the normal turnover of the ordinary judiciary and made the prerogative of specialized sections, to which are assigned, at their request, magistrates who have chosen to specialize in that subject. It is not difficult to guess that judges who are particularly sensitive to migrants' motives, rather than those of the state, are over-represented in these sections. And this even without wanting to theorize that specific sectors of the judiciary, characterized by ideological activism, have strategically decided to flow toward these sections in order to “occupy” them and wage political battles from there. However, let us mention a curious coincidence that has been noticed by politicians and the media: the specialized section of the Tribunal of Rome includes Silvia Albano, president of Magistratura Democratica, a particularly activist judicial component that we have already mentioned in relation to the rule of law in Italy. Judge Albano who, moreover, had already been noted as a critical voice toward government initiatives aimed at combating illegal immigration.
It will be appropriate for the government to carefully consider whether it still makes sense and is useful to concentrate migration issues in such special sections.
Thoughts on the MFA records
As objectionable as the Rome Tribunal's decree appears, with a forced reading of an EU Court of Justice ruling, one cannot help but note a critical aspect regarding the designation of Bangladesh and Egypt as safe countries.
Bangladesh in particular is crucial within the Italian government's migration containment strategies. In fact, it is the country where most illegal immigrants and asylum seekers come from (20 percent of illegal immigrants landed in 2024 claimed to be of Bengali nationality, but the real proportion could be even higher).
However, MFA's record, based on which Minister Tajani proceeded to designate Bangladesh and Egypt as safe countries of origin, contains critical and weak elements. Relying heavily on activist sources such as Amnesty or Human Rights Watch, it states a very wide range of category exceptions. In the case of Bangladesh, there are essentially all women (thus 50 percent of the population, 85 million people), plus ethnic-religious minorities (10 percent of the population, 17 million people), plus the various “LGBTQI+” sexual orientations, presumably not widespread in Bangladesh, but which can be more easily faked, as opposed to an ethnic origin, to fraudulently seek international protection.
Narrowing down these exceptions more would certainly have helped to avoid offering excuses for those who want to undermine the safe country designation.
Conclusions
The ruling of the specialized section of the Tribunal of Rome is clearly abnormal and very unconvincing in its arguments. It is therefore understandable why many quarreled, believing they saw in it an ideologically motivated interference by activist and politicized sectors of the judiciary.
However, due to the well-known problems plaguing the Italian justice system, this ruling is enough to set a stumbling block in Italy's path toward securing its borders - with virtually no risk, for the judges who signed it, of ever finding themselves accountable for any possible errors, negligence or abuses of their offices.
While waiting for the structural problems of our justice system to be remedied, through comprehensive and impactful reform that has been awaited for decades and unfortunately not yet in sight, the government may implement other countermeasures.
Already, legislative action is announced as imminent that will make the designation of safe countries a primary, rather than secondary, law.
The Foreign Ministry should pay more attention to the country records on whose grounds the safe ones are to be designated, so as to make the designation less attackable.
Yet another structural problem remains, which is that of national, European, and international laws that are now decidedly biased toward the rights of the migrant, including illegal migrants, over those of the receiving state. The government should review the different international treaties and declarations that have been signed, withdrawing wherever possible from those that limit the reach of the state. In the national as well as the European sphere, the government should promote legislative changes that restore the balance, where instead European legislation has generally shifted in the direction of hindering state defense of borders.
In the meantime, one way around the heavy constraints faced by Italy's democratic institutions is to strengthen cooperation with countries of transit and origin of migratory flows so that they are stopped before they enter Italy or are intercepted by our military or law enforcement agencies.

Daniele Scalea
Founder and President of Centro Studi Machiavelli. A graduate in History (University of Milan) and Ph.D. in Political Studies (Sapienza University), he teaches “History and Doctrine of Jihadism” at Marconi University and “Geopolitics of the Middle East” at Cusano University, where he has also taught on Islamic extremism in the past.
From 2018 to 2019, he served as Special Advisor on Immigration and Terrorism to Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Guglielmo Picchi; he later served as head of the technical secretariat of the President of the Parliamentary Delegation to the Central European Initiative (CEI).
Author of several books, including Immigration: the reasons of populists, which has also been translated into Hungarian.
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