Meloni made migrant ‘returns’ popular in the EU. Now the policy is backfiring on her

The Dublin Principle Turns Against Its Most Vocal Champion

Usagevpn.com – Giorgia Meloni spent years championing a hardline agenda of sending irregular migrants back to the EU member state where they first set foot on European soil. That agenda, long dismissed by critics as punitive and impractical, has now become the operating logic of the bloc’s asylum architecture. And Italy, the country that most aggressively pushed for those rules, is finding itself on the receiving end of them.

This past Sunday, Ireland added its name to a growing list of member states formally demanding that Rome accept back asylum seekers who entered the European Union through Italian ports. It follows identical demands from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Each request rests on the same legal foundation: the country of first entry bears responsibility for processing an asylum claim, a principle codified since the Dublin Convention took effect in 1997.

A Principle Older Than Most Current Governments

The Dublin framework has been a source of friction for nearly three decades. Governments along the Mediterranean and Atlantic periphery — Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and more recently Cyprus — have repeatedly argued that the rule places an unsustainable administrative burden on nations geographically positioned at the bloc’s outer edges. Multiple reform attempts during the 2014-to-2019 parliamentary term failed to dismantle the principle. Success came only in the following legislature, when lawmakers negotiated the EU Migration and Asylum Pact, which entered into force in June 2026.

Far from weakening the first-entry obligation, the new pact reinforced it. Asylum seekers who travel onward within the bloc must now be transferred back to the member state where they originally applied. The practical effect is to make secondary movements out of Italy considerably more difficult than under the old regime.

Italy’s Brief Suspension and Its Legal Aftermath

Within weeks of Meloni’s government assuming power in 2022, Rome unilaterally halted the reception of Dublin transfers, citing limited processing capacity and logistical constraints. The European Commission classified the suspension as a violation of Italy’s obligations under the Dublin framework. The EU Court of Justice subsequently upheld that assessment in multiple rulings, confirming that a member state cannot simply opt out of its first-entry duties on grounds of domestic strain.

What the New Pact Actually Changes

The 2026 agreement did introduce one procedural simplification: the former “take-back request” mechanism for secondary movements has been replaced by a straightforward notification system. Under the old rules, the responsible member state had to formally accept a transfer request before the migrant could be moved. Italy, in practice, almost never issued such acceptances. The notification mechanism eliminates that bottleneck, meaning other member states can now trigger a return without waiting for Rome’s cooperation.

The pact also envisions a mandatory solidarity scheme among member states, designed to distribute asylum burdens more evenly. Yet the annual relocation quotas remain modest. In 2026, just 8,878 migrants are slated for transfer from the five countries classified as under migratory pressure — Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta — to other EU destinations. Against the backdrop of over 66,000 irregular sea arrivals recorded in Italy last year and nearly 178,000 irregular crossings into the EU as a whole, tracked by Frontex, those figures represent a fraction of the flow.

Meloni’s Public Case

Rome has nonetheless backed the new migration rules. In a Facebook post directed at domestic critics, the Italian prime minister framed the pact as a landmark achievement for her country.

“The new agreement marks a positive turning point for Italy in the management of so-called ‘Dublin’ migrants,” Meloni wrote. “The new rules provide much greater protection for countries of first entry with regard to asylum claims and, with the strengthening of the ‘safe third country’ principle advocated by Italy, it will be easier to carry out accelerated returns.”

The argument is internally consistent: by locking in the first-entry principle and tightening return procedures, Italy gains leverage over migrants who have already moved northward. The cost, however, is borne by the very governments that Meloni once urged to send people back.

The Return Regulation and the Hub Experiment

A separate pillar of the migration package, the Return Regulation, was finalised in June of last year. Its objective is straightforward: too few asylum seekers whose applications are ultimately rejected are actually deported to their countries of origin. The regulation seeks to close that gap by streamlining procedures and shortening timelines.

Parallel to domestic reform, several EU governments have explored the creation of “return hubs” in non-EU states — facilities where migrants can be processed and sent onward even if they have no direct connection to that third country. Italy pioneered the concept with a hub in Albania, though Italian courts have repeatedly struck down aspects of the scheme. Germany, Austria, Greece, the Netherlands, and Denmark are now collaborating on a joint hub project outside the bloc. Negotiations for a facility in Uganda were described as being at an advanced stage earlier this month, with the target of making it operational in 2027.

The legal and logistical complexity of establishing such hubs in third countries means they are unlikely to absorb irregular arrivals in the near term. In the interim, the Dublin principle remains the primary instrument through which EU states repatriate migrants within the bloc to their country of first arrival — and Italy, for all its rhetorical force on the issue, sits squarely within that mechanism’s reach.