ROME/BRUSSELS – Europe's top court on Friday questioned the legitimacy of the "safe countries" list Italy uses to send migrants to Albania and fast-track their asylum claims, in a fresh blow to a key plank of the government's migration policy.

Conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's office, in a statement, called the court ruling "surprising" and said it "weakens policies to combat mass illegal immigration and defend national borders".

Dario Belluccio, a lawyer who represented one of the Bangladeshi asylum-seekers in the specific case brought before the European Court of Justice, said the Albanian migrant camps scheme had effectively been killed off.

"It will not be possible to continue with what the Italian government had envisioned before this decision ... Technically, it seems to me that the government's approach has been completely dismantled," he told Reuters.

Meloni had presented the offshoring of asylum-seekers to camps built in Albania as a cornerstone of her tough approach to immigration, and other European countries had looked to the idea as a possible model.

READ MORE: Italy starts transferring migrants to controversial Albanian facilities

However, the scheme stumbled on legal opposition almost as soon as it was launched last year, with Italian courts ordering the return to Italy of migrants picked up at sea and taken to Albania, citing issues with European Union law.

Difficult to get 'safe country' info

In a long-awaited judgment, the Luxembourg-based ECJ said Italy is authorized to fast-track asylum rejections for nationals coming from countries on a "safe" list - a principle at the heart of the Albania scheme.

It also said Italy is free to decide which countries are "safe", but also warned that such a designation should meet strict legal standards and allow applicants and courts to access and challenge the supporting evidence.

In its statement, the ECJ said a Rome court had turned to EU judges citing the impossibility of accessing such information and thus preventing it from "challenging and reviewing the lawfulness of such a presumption of safety".

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The ECJ also said that a country might not be classified "safe" if it does not offer adequate protection to its entire population, effectively agreeing with Italian judges that had raised this issue last year.

‘Judicial overreach’

Meloni's office complained that the EU judgment effectively allows national judges to dictate policy on migration, "further reduc(ing) the already limited" capacity of parliament and government to take decisions on the matter.

"This is a development that should concern everybody," it said.

The case raised before the ECJ involved two Bangladeshi nationals who were rescued at sea by Italian authorities and taken to Albania, where their asylum claims were rejected based on Italy's classification of Bangladesh as a "safe" country.

READ MORE: Italy, UK and Albania discuss irregular immigration

The detention facilities Italy set up in Albania have been empty for months, due to judicial obstacles. Last week, a report found that their construction cost was seven times more than that of an equivalent center in Italy.

Though the Albanian scheme is stuck in legal limbo, Italy's overall effort to curb undocumented migration by sea has been more successful. There have been 36,557 such migrant arrivals in the year to date, slightly up from the same period of 2024, but far below the 89,165 recorded over the same time span in 2023.