Italy Blocks EU Asylum Transfers

Between 12 June and 7 July, eight EU member states asked Italy to take back asylum seekers under Europe's new migration rules. Rome refused all 12 requested transfers (2eu.brussels, Visaverge). It has blocked incoming transfers since December 2022, except in family cases involving unaccompanied minors.

The European Commission's first review of how the new system is working, published on 16 July, found no sign that Italy's suspension had ended (Commission assessment). For Malta, this is not some distant quarrel between Berlin and Rome. The same central Mediterranean route that brings people to Lampedusa also shapes pressure on Malta's own reception system. The Pact's first enforcement test has delivered a blunt result: EU law can assign responsibility, but it cannot physically make a government open its doors.

Rome's Defence Looks Weak on Paper

Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi gives two reasons for Italy's position. First, he says old asylum cases involving people who reached Italy before 12 June were "zeroed out" through deals with Germany and France in late 2025 (Il Sole 24 Ore). Second, he argues that Germany should offset its transfer requests against the roughly 2,200 migrants brought to Italian ports this year by NGO rescue ships flying the German flag (Il Foglio).

Both arguments run into the law. No public text of any bilateral deal wiping out old cases appears in parliamentary records, Council registers, or Commission documents. The Commission's assessment discusses Italy's refusals without referring to any such waiver (Commission assessment). EU asylum regulations apply directly in every member state. Two interior ministries cannot privately agree to switch them off (AMMR).

The likelier explanation is more prosaic. Under Dublin III, the regulation that allocated asylum responsibility before the Pact, Germany had six months to physically transfer a person after Italy accepted responsibility. If Germany missed that deadline, responsibility automatically moved to Germany. The EU's Court of Justice confirmed that principle in the Shiri ruling (Dublin III, CJEU Shiri). Rome's claimed "reset" looks less like a diplomatic deal than expired deadlines dressed up as one.

The Clock Is the Only Enforcement Tool

The new Pact, formally the Asylum and Migration Management Regulation, was meant to narrow the gap between decisions on paper and transfers in practice. Take-back procedures are more automatic. The country where a person first entered the EU remains responsible for 20 months, rather than 12 (AMMR, Verfassungsblog).

The dispute with Italy shows what the Pact did not solve. There is still no direct way to force compliance. The chain works like this: a member state such as Germany requests a transfer; Italy must accept or propose another answer; the Commission can assess compliance, publish findings and, in the end, open infringement proceedings, which are the EU's formal tool for pushing governments to follow the law. Courts can clarify deadlines. But only Italian authorities can actually put someone on a plane.

Germany's own figures show how weak the old chain already was. In 2024, Germany filed 74,583 Dublin transfer requests across the EU, received 44,431 acceptances, and completed only 5,827 actual transfers, according to Brussels Signal. Roughly one acceptance in eight resulted in someone actually moving.

Selective, Not Incapable

One detail cuts through Rome's argument. According to NZZ, Italy accepted 51 Swiss take-back requests after 12 June. Switzerland is not an EU member, but it participates in the Dublin system. That pattern points to political choice, not administrative overload.

Other governments have drawn the same conclusion. The Netherlands sees the standoff as the Pact's first credibility test (Upday NL). Austria is watching through the Brenner Pass, the Alpine corridor used by migrants who land in Italy and then move north into Austrian and German territory. From Vienna, Rome's refusal looks like a way of exporting a problem it helped create (Kurier).

The Commission's next broad assessment is due in October. By then, transfer deadlines in the first post-Pact cases will start expiring. If Italy keeps refusing, responsibility for those asylum claims will shift back to Germany and the other requesting states, not because of a negotiated compromise, but because the regulation itself says so (AMMR). The Pact gives Europe stronger legal grounds to demand Italian cooperation. It still gives no one the power to carry out a transfer that Rome does not want.