Italy has signed a deal with Albania, where it planned to process up to 36,000 asylum seekers per year.
The European Union’s top court has backed Italian judges who questioned a list of “safe countries” drawn up by Rome, as it prepares to deport migrants to detention centres in Albania.
The hard-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni denounced the European Court of Justice’s (ECJ) ruling and said it “weakens policies to combat mass illegal immigration”.
Meloni’s plan to outsource migrant processing to a non-EU country and speed up repatriations of failed asylum seekers has been followed closely by others in the bloc.
The costly scheme has been frozen for months by legal challenges.
