EU law adviser backs Italy's Albania migrant centers — with rights warnings

(CN) — Italy should be allowed to send migrants and asylum-seekers to processing centers in Albania, but people sent there need to be covered by a detainee’s basic rights, such as free access to lawyers and visits by family members, an adviser to the European Union’s top court said Thursday.

In her analysis, Laila Medina, an advocate general who provides guidance to the European Court of Justice, said EU law does not forbid member states from establishing centers outside the bloc.

EU asylum law, she noted, does not specify that “detention centers” for asylum-seekers cannot be “outside the territory of the Union,” as in the Italian case.

But she took issue with Italy’s scheme because it lacked “clear and precise rules” ensuring detainees at the Albania centers are given “minimum guarantees," including the right to speak with lawyers, to be with family members and to be released as soon as detention ends.

Eda Gemi, an expert on migration law at the University of New York in Tirana, Albania, said Medina’s opinion reflected “broader judicial concern with the outsourcing” of “migration governance.”

She said that the opinion “reinforces the principle that states cannot externalize their legal obligations together with migrants.”

“The issue is not the existence of the facilities per se, but whether the legal architecture surrounding them adequately guarantees detainees’ rights, including access to asylum procedures, legal remedies, judicial oversight, and protection against arbitrary detention,” she said in an email.

Advocates general provide nonbinding opinions on cases pending before the European Court of Justice, the EU’s highest court. The high court most often follows their advice.

Medina’s opinion bolstered Italy’s case for its Albania centers, which have become a centerpiece of far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s promises to stop migrants from entering Italy.

Italian judges have repeatedly questioned the legality of the scheme and largely blocked their use. The centers opened in October 2024.

So far, though, EU courts have looked more favorably upon Meloni’s detention centers in Albania. In April, another advocate general, Nicholas Emiliou, declared establishing such centers outside the EU was lawful.

Similar to Medina’s opinion, Emiliou said Italy’s centers should be allowed to operate as long as people sent to Albania are afforded the usual rights asylum-seekers are entitled to, such as access to lawyers, translators and medical care.

Such an interpretation, though, has puzzled some experts.

“EU law gives asylum-seekers a right to remain on the territory until their asylum applications are decided,” said Steve Peers, an expert on human rights and asylum law at Royal Holloway, University of London, in an email. “This opinion is therefore wrong to say that moving people from Italy to prison in Albania is not a breach of EU law.”

He said Medina’s opinion “unconvincingly claims that Albanian territory can simply be regarded as Italian territory, ignoring the normal meaning of the concept of ‘territory.’”

Still, it looks like the EU as a whole may be following in Meloni’s footsteps.

Earlier this month, EU institutions agreed to pass a law permitting EU countries to set up centers outside the bloc where they can send people slated for deportation. Though not the same as Italy’s scheme, these so-called “return hubs” were inspired by Meloni’s Albania experiment.

Peers said Medina’s analysis might not apply to prospective “return hubs” EU nations are looking to establish outside the bloc.

“The opinion does not tell us that much about whether future treaties between member states and non-EU countries on being ‘return hubs’ or ‘safe third countries’ might be in breach of EU law,” he said. “Those treaties are unlikely to be like” the one Italy signed with Albania.

However, he said the recent opinions from the advocates general provided a “general indication” that “such treaties must comply with the human rights standards of EU law.”

The EU is in the midst of a wide-ranging shift to toughen immigration laws.

Friday will mark an important milestone in this shift because that’s when new rules go into effect to make it easier to deport people and quickly process asylum claims close to a country’s border.

“What seems to be emerging is a gradual shift within EU migration governance toward greater acceptance of externalized migration management mechanisms, including return hubs, border hotspots, and various forms of third-country processing,” Gemi said. “Recent developments suggest that the Albania model is no longer being treated as an exceptional bilateral experiment but increasingly as a potential policy template, if not a ‘best practice’ example, for future migration governance arrangements.”

Across Europe, growing anger over migrants has fueled the rise of far-right parties and led to harsher treatment of asylum-seekers, often in violation of human rights laws.

In Thursday’s opinion, Medina expressed concern over how the distance between Italy and Albania caused an obvious “geographical and administrative constraint.”

Her analysis was linked to the cases of two Moroccan citizens deported from Italy to the centers in Albania.

Once the Moroccans arrived in Albania, they asked for asylum in Italy, which delayed their deportations and brought their cases to the attention of judges in Rome. An appeals court in Rome asked the Court of Justice to determine whether the Albania centers fell foul of EU law.

Medina said EU law did not prevent Italy from setting up the centers, but she emphasized that people sent there must be protected by EU asylum laws.

In this regard, she said the sheer distance between Italy and Albania posed problems for family members and lawyers seeking to visit someone in detention in Albania.

Gemi said the protocol Albania and Italy signed when they set up the centers has been criticized because of its legal weaknesses “regarding asylum procedures and detention safeguards.”

She hoped Medina’s opinion would “set a precedent for how European courts approach future externalization agreements.”

“The message seems to be that states may experiment with offshore or third-country processing models, but they cannot dilute legal accountability or weaken human rights protections in doing so,” she said.

Gemi said it remained unclear whether people sent to the centers in Albania receive adequate treatment and effective access to lawyers, doctors, and procedural safeguards. She has studied the centers.

“To date, there has been very limited institutional transparency, and much of the available information derives from media reporting,” she said.

The picture, she said, “appears somewhat mixed.”

Cleaning and medical staff are present at the centers, but she noted a “strong emphasis” on “security infrastructure” with reports of more than 180 Italian police agents and prison guards at the centers despite a low number of migrants.

Courthouse News reporter Cain Burdeau is based in the European Union.

Follow @cainburdeau