ROME: Europe`s top court on Friday questioned the legitimacy of the `safe countries` list Italy uses to send migrants to Albania and fast-track their asylum claims, in a fresh blow to a key plank of the government`s migration policy.

Conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni`s office, in a statement, called the court ruling `surprising` and said it `weakens policies to combat mass illegal immigration and defend national borders`.

Dario Belluccio, a lawyer who represented one of the Bangladeshi asylum-seekers in the specific case brought before the European Court of Justice, said the Albanian migrant camps scheme had effectively been killed off. `It will not be possible to continue with what the Italian government had envisioned before this decision ... Technically, it seems to me that the government`s approach has been completely dismantled,` he said.

Meloni had presented the offshoring of asylum-seekers to camps built in Albania as a cornerstone of her tough approach to immigration.-Reuters