Giorgia Meloni championed the EU's tougher line on returning irregular migrants, but the policy is now rebounding on Italy. On Sunday, Ireland became the latest member state to formally ask Rome to readmit asylum seekers who first entered the bloc through Italian territory, joining Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands.
The requests are rooted in the new EU Pact on Asylum and Migration, which reaffirms the core Dublin principle: the country where a non-EU national first enters the bloc and lodges an asylum claim is responsible for processing it. That rule, in force since 1997, has long been criticised by frontline states like Italy, Spain and Greece for placing an unfair burden on them.
Italy's unilateral suspension
Shortly after taking office in 2022, Meloni's government unilaterally suspended Dublin transfers to Italy, citing practical and capacity constraints. The European Commission has consistently viewed this as a breach of Italy's obligations, and the EU Court of Justice has backed that position in several rulings.
The new pact, which entered into force in June 2026, simplifies the procedure for sending migrants back to their first country of entry. Instead of a formal take-back request that Italy could ignore, a simple notification now suffices. This change makes secondary movements from Italy to other EU states far more difficult.
Despite the tougher rules, Meloni has publicly embraced the pact. In a Facebook post, she called it "a positive turning point for Italy" and argued that the strengthened 'safe third country' principle would facilitate accelerated returns. Yet the numbers tell a different story: in 2026, only 8,878 people are slated for relocation from frontline states to other EU countries, a fraction of the over 66,000 irregular arrivals by sea to Italy last year and the nearly 178,000 irregular crossings recorded across the EU by Frontex.
Return hubs and their limits
The EU's broader return strategy includes the Return Regulation, finalised last June, which aims to increase deportations of rejected asylum seekers. Several governments, including Italy, have also pushed for "return hubs" in third countries. Italy's pilot scheme in Albania has been repeatedly blocked by Italian judges, while Germany, Austria, Greece, the Netherlands and Denmark are jointly exploring a facility in Uganda, with reports suggesting it could open by 2027.
But legal and practical hurdles mean such hubs are unlikely to offer an immediate solution. For now, intra-EU returns under the Dublin principle remain the most straightforward option for destination countries.
Ironically, the only two EU states that have explicitly ruled out Dublin-based returns to Italy are Spain and France — the same countries that dismissed Meloni's return hubs as "ineffective" and opposed EU funding for them.
"Meloni has fully endorsed the New Migration Pact, opting for political instrumentalisation that boasted Italy as leading the way in EU migration policy," said Sara Prestianni, advocacy director at the NGO Euromed Rights. "The Italian government did not properly fight Dublin's first-arrival principle, which makes little sense since it leaves migrants who want to reach a different destination country in a legal limbo for months or even years."
The friction is reigniting old fault lines between frontline member states and destination countries. The recent crisis in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, which saw a surge of migrants and a diplomatic spat between Rome and Madrid after Meloni suspended Schengen checks with Spain, has sharpened the divide. As Dublin-based returns heat up, the tension between Italy and Germany has become particularly visible.
If Italy maintains its current stance, it risks undermining the very pact it helped shape. The coming months will test whether Meloni's hardline approach can survive the consequences of its own logic.
