Italy stalls EU asylum transfers

Eight EU countries lodged transfer requests with Italy in the first three weeks after the new asylum rules began applying on 12 June. Rome refused the lot. Two months on, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told ANSA that about 50 requests had come in since the pact started, but only three people had actually arrived.

That distance between a file approved in one capital and a person arriving in another is the old Dublin problem in new legal clothes. The EU’s Migration and Asylum Pact was meant to close it. The first evidence suggests the machinery still jams at the same point.

Requests pile up, arrivals do not

The European Commission’s first assessment covered 12 June to 7 July. It found 12 transfer cases from eight member states, all refused by Rome. Piantedosi’s interview on 21 August gives the later picture: about 50 requests made, three arrivals completed.

Austria is the only state claiming completed handovers in concrete terms. Austrian and Italian outlets, citing Austria’s Interior Ministry, have reported that four asylum seekers were physically transferred by bus or train after 12 June (ORF, Il Sole 24 Ore). But four Austrian transfers do not sit neatly beside Piantedosi’s figure of three arrivals. No case-level data has been published, and neither side has explained the mismatch.

This is not just an Italian accounting dispute. Eurostat figures show that in 2025, 111,708 outgoing requests under the old Dublin system produced only 16,620 actual transfers. Dublin was the EU’s previous rulebook, generally making the first country of entry responsible for an asylum claim. Italy alone received 24,152 incoming requests that year.

The pact was built to improve that ratio, with better evidence tools and clearer rules for deciding which state is responsible. But the weakest point was never simply identifying the right country. It was getting the person there.

Why delay is the weapon

Under EU case law, if a transfer is not carried out within six months, responsibility shifts back to the sending state (Regulation 604/2013, Art. 29). Italy does not have to win every legal argument. It can gain a great deal by letting the clock run.

The Commission has said a receiving state cannot simply refuse a transfer; it must propose another date. But Brussels cannot put someone on a plane to Rome. Its enforcement lever is the infringement procedure, a slow legal route that can end in a court judgment and fines. That works on the scale of years. The transfer deadline works on the scale of six months.

The row between Berlin and Rome shows the opening Italy is using. When Germany tried to transfer three asylum seekers on 19 August, the Viminale, Italy’s interior ministry, said the cases predated the pact’s 12 June start date and fell under a late-2025 bilateral “clean slate” understanding (Adnkronos, Tagesschau). Germany disagrees.

That grey area between old Dublin files and new pact cases is where the fight is now taking place. Neither EU law nor the bilateral agreement appears to draw a line sharp enough to settle it quickly.

As we reported, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said last week that Italy would not accept returns from Germany while German NGO vessels continue bringing rescued migrants to Italian ports. The legal obligations are separate. Politically, the point is to make a transfer dispute sound like a sovereignty dispute, which is a much easier argument to sell at home.

Execution failure is Europe-wide

Finland has confirmed it is preparing individual transfers to Italy, but had not completed any by 21 August (HS). The Netherlands agreed with Rome on a clean-slate approach covering only post-12 June cases, but no Dutch source has confirmed a completed transfer (NOS).

Ireland is pressing Rome alongside northern member states, though Dublin’s own record weakens the argument. The Irish Times reported just 19 physical transfers from 1,037 transfer decisions between 2021 and 2025. Eurostat recorded zero outgoing Irish Dublin transfers in 2025. Even governments demanding Italian compliance have struggled to turn transfer decisions into actual movement.

The pact gave Europe stronger ways to prove which country should handle an asylum case: a broader fingerprint database through recast Eurodac, clearer responsibility rules, and tougher provisions on secondary movement. Those tools matter, but they solve the assignment problem. They do not solve the enforcement problem.

Execution still sits with national governments, and national governments may decide that delay serves them better than co-operation. The Commission now has to say whether it will open infringement proceedings against Italy. Until then, Rome is testing a blunt proposition: precise rules do not count for much if a government refuses to move people.