(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 16 - Magistrates union ANM on Saturday slammed a government amendment that would move rulings on migrants from the immigration section of the Rome tribunal to the capital's court of appeals in a bid to end legal hurdles to Premier Giorgia Meloni's government's controversial new flagship policy of processing migrants in Albania.
    Judges have twice overturned the detention of migrants taken to the two new Italian-run processing centres in the Balkan country in a scheme Meloni says will deter migrants to the envy of the world and which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has held up as a potential model for other countries.
    ANM President Giuseppe Santalucia said of the emendment to the government's migrant flow decree: "with a stroke of the pen they would like to upend the ordinary arrangement of competencies".
    Italian President Sergio Mattarella on Wednesday said Italy knows how to take care of itself after Elon Musk wrote on his platform X that the Rome judges who nixed the detention of the second batch of migrants in Albania "needed to go".
    On Thursday Musk said after a call with Meloni, a personal friend, that he respected Mattarella but would continue to state his views.
    Musk, who is set to lead an efficiency drive under newly re-elected American President Donald Trump, is close to Meloni and also has a longtime admirer in anti-migrant League party leader and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini, who has insisted the tycoon is right in criticising what Salvini calls "Communist judges".
    Salvini has also long been an admirer of Trump.
    On September 23 Musk presented Meloni with the 'Global Citizen Award 2024 from Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, praising her as "someone who is even more beautiful inside than outside". Musk said Meloni had done "an incredible job" as prime minister with "record growth and employment".
    "She is someone who is authentic, honest, truthful", added the billionaire during a ceremony at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Manhattan.
    Thanking Musk for his "precious genius", Meloni delivered a passionate defence of Western values. After feverish social media speculation over pictures of the pair enjoying each other's company, Musk denied suggestions they might be having an affair.
    The seven migrants at the centre of the second case, who are citizens of Egypt and Bangladesh, have been taken back to a hosting facility in Italy pending the decision of the European Court of Justice.
    On October 18, the same immigration unit of Rome's tribunal had failed to validate the detention of 12 migrants who were part of the first group to be taken to Albania under the government's controversial agreement with Tirana to run migrant-centres on Albanian territory.
    The court at the time rejected the migrants' detention in Albania as part of accelerated border procedures on the grounds that their countries of provenance, which were also Bangladesh and Egypt, could not be considered wholly safe, based on an October 4 sentence of the European Court of Justice.
    The ECJ has said that a country is not safe if just a part of its territory is found to be unsafe.
    Their cases thus needed to be examined under a regular procedure, which was not possible in Albania, the court said.
    The cabinet has since passed a measure setting a list of 19 safe countries, including Bangladesh and Egypt, in order to overcome the legal hurdle to the agreement being applied, saying courts needed to rule based on the decree rather than on the European Court of Justice's sentence.
    As well as von der Leyen, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is among the foreign officials who have voiced interest in the Italy-Albania protocol.
    The Italian opposition says it is an expensive propaganda stunt that will only address a small fraction, an estimated 2%, of the migrants currently reaching Italy.
    When up to speed the two centres are projected to be able to process a yearly total of 3,000 migrants.
    Last year over 150,000 migrants reached Italy's shores, although the numbers are currently sharply down this year.
    The scheme has been costed at over 800 million euros over five years. (ANSA).