Italy stalls asylum transfers

Eight EU countries asked Italy to take back asylum seekers in the first three weeks after the new EU asylum rules started applying on 12 June. Rome refused them all. Two months later, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told ANSA that around 50 requests had reached Italy since the pact came into force, but only three people had actually arrived.

That difference matters for Malta. The EU's Migration and Asylum Pact was sold to frontline states as a system that would make responsibility clearer and transfers more workable. The first evidence from Italy suggests the old problem has survived the new law: Brussels can decide which country is responsible, but it still struggles to make a government physically accept a person.

Requests pile up, arrivals do not

The European Commission's first assessment, covering 12 June to 7 July, found 12 transfer cases from eight member states. Italy rejected every one. Piantedosi's 21 August interview gives the next frame: about 50 requests made, three arrivals completed.

Austria is the only country claiming concrete handovers. Austrian and Italian outlets, citing Austria's Interior Ministry, have reported four asylum seekers 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 government has explained the mismatch.

The same pattern is visible across Europe. Eurostat data 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 asylum responsibility regime, generally placing responsibility on the first country of entry. Italy alone received 24,152 incoming requests that year.

The pact was meant to narrow that gap with stronger evidence tools and clearer criteria for assigning responsibility. But the weak point was never only identification. It was the handover itself.

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 need to win every legal argument. It only needs time to pass.

The Commission has said a receiving state cannot simply refuse a transfer; it must propose another date. But Brussels has no operational power to put someone on a plane to Rome. Its main enforcement tool is the infringement procedure, a slow legal route that can eventually lead to a court judgment and fines. That works on a timetable of years, while the transfer clock runs for six months.

The row between Berlin and Rome shows the mechanism clearly. 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 rejects that reading.

The grey zone between old Dublin files and new pact cases is where the dispute now sits. Neither EU law nor the bilateral agreement appears to draw a clean enough line to stop both governments using it politically.

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, but the framing is useful at home. It turns an administrative transfer dispute into a sovereignty argument.

Execution failure is Europe-wide

Finland has confirmed it is preparing individual transfers to Italy, but had completed none by 21 August (HS). The Netherlands has agreed with Rome on a clean-slate approach covering only post-12 June cases, but no Dutch source confirms that a transfer has actually happened (NOS).

Ireland is pressing Rome together with northern states, but its own record weakens the pressure. 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 their own decisions into movement.

The pact gives Europe better tools to prove which country should handle an asylum claim: a broader fingerprint database through recast Eurodac, clearer responsibility rules, and stronger provisions against secondary movement. None of that gives the EU a direct way to force a transfer when the receiving state stalls.

For Malta, this is not a distant Brussels design flaw. Any system that depends on frontline states accepting responsibility, and on other states accepting relocation or return rules, stands or falls on execution. The pact has improved assignment. Execution remains in the hands of national governments that may have every political incentive not to cooperate.

The Commission now owes a clear answer on whether it will open infringement proceedings against Italy. Until then, Rome is testing whether precise rules matter when a government simply refuses to move people.