As European states begin to wake from their ‘Sleeping Beauty’ slumber and recognize the staggeringly damaging effects of illegal migration on their societies, they are increasingly attempting to protect their borders and prevent further migrant flows into their countries. However, these efforts are often hindered by courts that promote a left-wing liberal narrative, welcoming policies, and the sanctity of human rights.
Italy has long been one of the EU member states most under migratory pressure. For years, tens of thousands of illegal migrants have been landing on Lampedusa, supported by liberal NGOs, overwhelming the asylum system. Following the victory of Giorgia Meloni and her right-wing coalition, led by Fratelli d’Italia, in the autumn 2022 parliamentary elections, drastic changes to Italian migration policy were expected. However, many of the new government’s measures and initiatives are now being challenged in various national and European courts.
Hold Up Those Ships!
In the autumn of 2023 Rome reached an agreement with Albania under which Italy will transfer up to 36,000 asylum seekers to detention centres in Albania each year. According to the deal, individuals applying for international protection will be housed in the Balkan state until their case has been decided. Those granted asylum will be allowed to enter Italy, while others are likely to be returned to their country of origin.
Of course, the agreement has sparked widespread outrage among international NGOs and left-wing politicians. The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has warned that the Italy–Albania deal is costly, cruel, and counterproductive—and is likely to push people seeking safety onto more dangerous routes. ‘The Italy–Albania deal is costly, puts people’s rights at risk, and will likely do little to deter people from taking boats across the Mediterranean. It’s a bad idea that keeps getting worse,’ Human Rights Watch wrote in its analysis.
‘It seems the verdict could pose a significant obstacle to Italy’s government fully implementing its deal with Albania’
The first group of migrants was due to be transferred in October, and a group of left-wing activists even protested at the entrance of a port in one of the Albanian towns where an Italian detention centre had been opened. However, the migrants were returned to Italy following a ruling by a Rome court, which referenced a recent judgment by the European highest court. The ECJ had deemed their deportation invalid due to the list of ‘safe countries’. On October 4 the European court ruled that many of the 22 countries on Italy’s original list could not be considered fully safe, as they did not guarantee the protection of all citizens’ rights.
More recently, earlier this week, another Italian court ordered Rome to transfer a group of asylum seekers to Italy after they were intercepted at sea and taken to Albania for processing. The ruling referred to the aforementioned ECJ position on safe countries. At this point, it seems the verdict could pose a significant obstacle to Italy’s government fully implementing its deal with Albania.
The significance of the case is highlighted by the fact that Elon Musk, owner of X, Tesla, and SpaceX, and a potential future member of the next Trump administration, has expressed his support for the agreement. ‘These judges have to go,’ Musk wrote in a post on his platform.
No Tories, No Rwanda
Italy is not the only European state seeking to address the issue of migrants besieging its borders, but the courts are preventing such efforts. The UK made a deal with Rwanda under the previous Conservative government, similar to the Italy–Albania agreement. In April 2022 former British Home Secretary Priti Patel signed an agreement for the transportation of migrants in exchange for infrastructure developments in Rwanda. According to the deal, the UK could transfer up to 52,000 migrants to the African country each year.
It took two years and countless court battles before the law facilitating the agreement was passed in the spring of 2024. In the autumn of 2023 the United Kingdom’s highest court ruled that Rwanda is not a safe third country for the government to send asylum seekers to. The Supreme Court highlighted Rwanda’s poor human rights record, including threats to Rwandans living in the UK, as well as extrajudicial killings, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances, torture, and restrictions on media and political freedoms.
In addition to the obstacles posed by the courts, the British Conservatives suffered a humiliating defeat in the 2024 general elections. After Keir Starmer and the Labour Party won the election, PM Starmer announced that the Rwanda plan would be cancelled and replaced by the Border Security Command.
The Binding Hand of Judicial Activism
The above examples clearly illustrate that one of the, if not the most important, problems in effectively dealing with migration is the excessively liberal and welcoming stance of the courts. These courts interpret human rights in an explicitly liberal way, thereby stifling any genuinely useful action.
Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán Viktor just spoke about the issue last week in Budapest at the European Political Community (EPC) summit. He warned that there is a significant obstacle to political leaders’ desire for change that must be overcome, which he termed ‘judicial activism’. He explained that ‘we decide things,’ governments implement them, but common decisions are often undermined by initially European and subsequently national judicial rulings, causing the progress made in reducing migration to suddenly fall apart. The only exception to this, he emphasized, is Hungary, which has consistently stood against judicial activism. The prime minister asserted: ‘I don’t think we can stop migration if we don’t revolt against the laws and court rulings currently in force.’
Hungary and Orbán have experienced ‘judicial activism’ first-hand many times in recent years. Since the migration crisis of 2015, the country has consistently maintained a firm stance on border protection, not allowing migrants to enter its territory until the asylum application has been processed. This practice has proven to be the only effective way to curb migration, and increasingly, more European states are attempting to adopt it.
‘I don’t think we can stop migration if we don’t revolt against the laws and court rulings currently in force’
The Hungarian practice has faced staunch resistance from globalist, liberal European courts. In June of this year the ECJ delivered a verdict stating that Hungary must pay a €200 million fine for not implementing changes to its policy on handling migrants and asylum seekers at its borders. The ECJ also ruled that Hungary had failed to take measures ‘to comply with the 2020 judgment regarding the right of applicants for international protection to remain in Hungary pending a final decision on their appeal against the rejection of their application and the removal of illegally staying third-country nationals.’
The ECJ has also ordered Hungary to pay a penalty of one million euros for each day of delay in complying with the rules, due to non-compliance with the 2020 judgment. The Hungarian government argued that the 2020 ruling was moot, as it had already closed the so-called ‘transit zones’ on the border.
‘The #ECJ’s decision to fine #Hungary with 200M euros plus 1M euros daily(!!!) for defending the borders of the European Union is outrageous and unacceptable. It seems that illegal #migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens,’ Orbán commented on the verdict in a post on X at the time.
Hungary has resisted the judgment and has not paid a single euro cent of the fine since then. The dispute has escalated to the point where the idea has been suggested that the Hungarian government will transport a number of migrants to Brussels— a practice already used by Republicans in Texas, who offer free bus services to illegal immigrants to cities with Democratic mayors.
Hungary’s resistance and sophisticated actions against the court rulings are exactly what Viktor Orbán was referring to when he called for a revolution against judicial activism. This could serve as an example to states such as Italy, which are willing to defend their populations and cultures against the flood of migrants overwhelming Europe. However, as long as these actions remain isolated cases, there is little chance of meaningful change. That is why we need an all-European revolution against biased court rulings on migration—and we need it now!
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