Amnesty International is demanding the EU stop outsourcing asylum, in a report critical of Italy’s controversial deal with Albania to fast-track deportations of people deemed to come from countries considered ‘safe’.
But the NGO’s appeal, along with the EU recommendations due to be published later on Thursday (20 August), is likely to fall on deaf ears as the European Commission instead presses member states to further embed their self-declared “innovative solutions” aimed at preventing people from ever claiming asylum in Europe.
Earlier this month, Magnus Brunner, the EU commissioner for migration, told MEPs that national capitals should take advantage of expanded rules, known as ‘safe country concepts’, in order “to have asylum procedures already outside the European Union.”
He also suggested the focus on setting up deportation centres abroad was a distraction, noting the safe country concept essentially allowed Spain to deport almost everyone that arrived at the Ceuta enclave back to Morocco after the sudden arrival of some 80,000 people.
Linked to that is the possibility of also sending asylum-seeking nationals to another non-EU country, even if they have never set foot there before.
“We should also consider how to use the concept of safe third countries effectively,” he said, echoing the failed UK deal with Rwanda.
For Amnesty and its report, the EU’s safe country concept “inherently jeopardise human rights” by denying people access to territorial asylum.
It has also accused Italy of relying on “authoritarian practice to evade accountability” by issuing numerous decrees to circumvent courts, while highlighting alleged abuses at its migration facilities in Albania.
Between April and May last year alone, there were at least two attempted hangings and various incidents of self-harm.
But last year, the commission introduced a list of "safe countries of origin" spanning Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia, as well as EU candidate countries Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey. It allows authorities to speed up asylum claims from those countries.
The European Parliament's lead negotiator on the safe origin country concept was Alessandro Ciriani, an Italian MEP affiliated with the Brothers of Italy, a political party headed by Italy's prime minister Giorgia Meloni.
The expanded rules came at a critical time for Italy's €680m five-year deal with Albania, which had transferred only 74 people directly from international waters to Albania between October 2024 and January 2025. Those transfers stopped after Italian court rulings intervened.
Rome's first-instance court had also thrown a spanner into the transfers, following a decision based on a separate European Court of Justice that said member states cannot designate some parts of an origin country as safe.
With the transfers to Albania halted, Italy decided to instead use its facilities in Gjadër to lock up failed asylum seekers awaiting deportation.
The EU commission has since amended the rules, allowing EU states to carve out territorial safe zones under new EU asylum rules that entered into force in June.
Italy, it seems, would now be allowed to send people back to their countries anyway. The changes were ushered through while Denmark was steering the six-month rotating EU presidency amid bogus claims that such ideas would remove the incentives to embark on dangerous journeys to the EU.
Even so, Amnesty says the carve-outs do not give national authorities blanket power to force people to return, citing judicial protection under the EU charter of fundamental rights.
Albania's Edi Rama with Italy's prime minister Giorgia Meloni (Source: Italian government)
