The European Court of Justice dealt a major blow to Italy’s flagship migration policy on Friday, backing Italian judges who had challenged a list of “safe countries” used by Rome to deport migrants to Albanian detention centres.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s plan to outsource migrant processing to a non-European Union country and speed up repatriations of failed asylum seekers has been frozen for months due to a spate of legal challenges, with Italian judges arguing that EU states cannot designate an entire country as “safe” when some of its regions aren’t.

In its ruling on Friday, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said that Italy had the right to designate “safe countries of origin”.

It added, however, that “a Member State may not include a country in the list of safe countries of origin if it does not offer adequate protection to its entire population”.

The court also said that the sources of information on which the government’s “safe country” designation was based should have been made accessible to both the defendants and the courts.

In the case considered by the ECJ, two Bangladeshi nationals taken to an Albanian migrant centre were denied the possibility of “challenging and reviewing the lawfulness of such a presumption of safety”.

Italy’s “safe country” list included Egypt, Bangladesh and Tunisia – countries where human rights groups have long documented abuses against certain minorities.

Meloni’s government denounced the ECJ’s ruling on Friday, saying it “weakens policies to combat mass illegal immigration”.

It also accused the court of “claiming powers that do not belong to it in the face of responsibilities that are political”.

READ ALSO: Italy to turn empty Albanian migrant centres into repatriation hubs

Meloni and her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama signed a contested migrant deal in November 2023.

Under the plan, Italy would finance and operate Albania-based detention centres designed to fast-track the processing of migrants hailing from countries deemed as “safe”, and therefore unlikely to be eligible for asylum.

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Dozens of migrants were sent to the centres in late 2024 and then returned to Italy after Italian judges ruled that they did not meet the criteria to be detained there.

Italy responded by modifying its list of safe countries, but judges ruled against subsequent detentions and referred the issue to the ECJ.

Meloni’s government has slammed the rulings by Italian judges as “politically motivated”.