ROME (Reuters) - An Italian navy ship set sail for Albania on Wednesday carrying a second small group of migrants, with Rome looking to salvage a controversial plan to process asylum seekers abroad after a first attempt hit legal hurdles.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's government hopes that taking boat migrants to guarded camps in Albania rather than letting them enter Italy will act as a deterrence to others considering making the dangerous sea crossing to Europe.
Italy sent an initial group of 16 migrants to Albania last month, but they were all brought back within days, the majority of them after a Rome court ruled they could not be held in the Balkan country due to concerns over their legal status.
Only eight migrants were dispatched towards Albania on Wednesday from where they had been rescued near the island of Lampedusa, suggesting the government was treading softly, testing to see if it could overcome the October impasse.
The first group of migrants came from Egypt and Bangladesh, two of 22 countries that Italy had classified as safe, meaning the government believed they could be rapidly repatriated.
However, the Rome judges questioned this, pointing to a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which said a country outside the EU cannot be declared safe unless its entire territory is deemed free of danger.
As a result, all those in Albania were brought to Italy, where they were put in unguarded reception centres.
Infuriated by the decision, Meloni's cabinet upgraded the legal status of its list of safe countries, making it an act of law rather than a lesser ministerial decree, believing this means it will be harder for courts to challenge its validity.
The military did not say where the new group of asylum-seekers came from. Italian newspapers had speculated at the weekend that the government might focus on Tunisians, because their country was deemed more stable than many others.
Italy has built two reception centres in Albania, in the first scheme by a European Union nation to divert migrants to a non-EU country. The facilities in Shengjin and Gjader are staffed by Italian personnel.
Under the deal with Tirana, the total number of migrants present at one time in Albania cannot be more than 3,000.
Italy has said only "non-vulnerable" men from safe countries would be sent to there, imposing a limit of 36,000 a year.