Italy Blocks Germany’s Asylum Returns

Matteo Salvini told a League rally on 22 August that Germany had "no right" to send back "even one irregular immigrant" while German NGO vessels were bringing rescued people to Italian ports (ANSA). It was a line built for the festa tent of Italian right-wing politics: loud, simple, useful. But the power to accept or refuse asylum transfers is not in Salvini's transport ministry. It sits with Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, whose department has been quietly turning down German transfer requests since mid-August (Il Messaggero). Salvini gives the dispute its noise. Piantedosi controls the file.

That distinction matters because beneath the political performance is a fight over how the EU's new asylum system works in practice, barely two months after it began applying.

Which rulebook applies

The dispute between Berlin and Rome rests on one date: 12 June 2026. That is when the EU's new Asylum and Migration Management Regulation began applying, replacing the old Dublin system (EUR-Lex). Under both systems, the basic principle is familiar: the member state where an asylum seeker first arrives or is first registered normally carries responsibility for examining the claim.

Germany wants to return people to Italy under the new rules. Italy's Interior Ministry argues that people who arrived before 12 June belong under the older arrangements and cannot be reopened as new cases (Sky TG24). Rome formally rejected three planned German transfers in mid-August. One concerned a 22-year-old Somali woman who had reached Germany in March. She entered church protection in Nuremberg before the scheduled transfer, so the case collapsed before it could become a proper legal test of the new system (EU Perspectives).

Piantedosi has tried to shrink the argument. He told ANSA on 21 August that Italy had received about 50 requests since 12 June but only three people had actually arrived, describing the controversy as "sterile" (ANSA). The figures are indeed tiny. The problem for Berlin and the European Commission is that Rome is refusing even those small numbers.

Who is pushing, who is holding back

The pressure on Italy is no longer only German. Austria has completed four transfers to Italy since the pact started, using cooperative cases in which people travelled by train or bus (ORF, Die Presse). Finland is preparing individual transfers, though without confirmed completions (Helsingin Sanomat). The Netherlands says it has begun the process (Adnkronos).

France and Spain are more cautious. Madrid is itself a first-entry country, so it prefers to handle pressure through the pact's solidarity instruments: the mechanism under which states can either take relocated asylum seekers or contribute money to a common fund (Euronews). Spain's position is not charity towards Rome. If unlimited first-entry returns become normal, the same logic can be used against Madrid.

The Commission's first assessment, covering 12 June to 7 July, found that eight member states had submitted requests involving 12 transfers to Italy. Italy rejected all of them. Brussels said a receiving state cannot simply refuse and must propose another date. That instruction was meant to stop refusal-by-delay. It did not, by itself, move a single person (European Commission, 2EU Brussels).

Rome can say no today; Brussels can punish later

Germany may have the stronger legal argument, but its enforcement tools are slow. The Commission can open infringement proceedings, the formal EU process used when a member state is accused of breaching EU law. Germany could, in theory, bring a state-to-state case before the Court of Justice, though member states have avoided doing that on migration because it can poison relations for years. Financial penalties arrive only after a judgment and continued non-compliance (Article 258 TFEU). None of this puts anyone on a plane, train, or bus next week.

Time is Italy's leverage. If a transfer is not carried out within the legal deadline, responsibility moves back to the sending state, as the Court of Justice held in its 2017 Shiri judgment (CJEU, C-201/16). Reject the request. Dispute the category. Demand a new date. Tie cooperation to the presence of NGO rescue vessels. EU asylum law does not make Germany responsible for a claim simply because a rescue ship flies a German flag (EUR-Lex AMMR). But Salvini's point does not need to survive a courtroom to work politically. It buys Rome time while northern governments run down their deadlines.

Austria's four completed transfers show the system can function. They also show its scale: four people, by bus, in two months. The old Dublin system produced 24,152 transfer requests to Italy in 2025 alone, while Germany managed only 5,377 transfers to all destinations combined (Eurostat via Sky TG24). That gap between legal paperwork and physical movement was Dublin's permanent weakness. Italy has now found the new pact's version of the same flaw: EU law can assign responsibility faster than Brussels can enforce it.