On March 23rd and 24th, the Court of Justice heard the joined cases Comeri, Sidilli and Sedrata, all of which concern Italy’s controversial Albania migration scheme. The cases arise from the Italy – Albania Protocol of 6 November 2023, later ratified by Italy in February 2024, which allows Italy to use repatriation detention centres on Albanian territory under Italian jurisdiction. In the disputes now before the Court, some third-country nationals who were already detained in Italy under expulsion orders were transferred to one of those centres in Albania, applied there for international protection, and then received new detention orders.
That matters because the references ask whether a member state can shift parts of migration control beyond EU territory without loosening the legal constraints that EU asylum law imposes. In Comeri and Sidilli, the Italian courts have asked in particular about Italy’s competence to conclude the protocol, the consequences of any failure to validate detention, and compliance with rights of defence and health protections. In Sedrata, the focus is on detention and the status of asylum seekers.
The wider significance is political as much as legal. Italy’s Albania model has become one of Europe’s boldest attempts to externalise migration management, and it is situated in a broader EU debate that has steadily moved towards tougher external border controls and deeper cooperation with third countries. Yet the European Parliament’s own research service notes that, while such ideas have repeatedly been proposed, EU law does not actually provide for the processing of asylum applications outside the Union, and externalisation continues to raise serious legal and human-rights concerns.
The Court has already signalled, in a related but narrower area, that governments do not have unlimited room to manoeuvre. In Alace and Canpelli, delivered last August, it held that a member state may designate a country as a “safe country of origin” by legislative act only if that designation remains open to effective judicial review, and only if the underlying sources are accessible to both the applicant and the reviewing court. It also made clear that a member state may not place a country on such a list if that country does not offer adequate protection to its entire population.
That earlier ruling did not decide the legality of the Albania protocol itself. But it did reinforce a broader principle that now hangs over these new hearings. Moving migration procedures offshore does not, by itself, move them outside the reach of EU legal guarantees. That principle sits at the core of the Common European Asylum System, especially the rules on asylum procedures and reception conditions.
However the Court eventually decides, these cases are likely to shape not only Italy’s experiment in Albania, but the legal limits of the EU’s wider turn towards migration externalisation.
Sources
- https://curia.europa.eu/site/jcms/p1_1000081788/en/hearings-joined-cases-c-706/25-comeri-and-c-707/25-sidilli-and-c-414/25-sedrata
- https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2024/757609/EPRS_BRI%282024%29757609_EN.pdf
- https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2013/32
- https://cosmopolismigration.com/2025/10/27/the-italy-albania-protocol-on-collaboration-on-migration-matters-externalisation-and-non-refoulement/
