The 43 asylum seekers taken earlier this week by an Italian Navy ship to Albania as part of the government's new fast-track processing scheme are set to reach the Puglia port of Bari on Saturday night after a Rome appeals court did not validate their detention at a new Italian-run facility in the country.
The asylum seekers - who are from Bangladesh and Egypt - will be taken to Bari by a coast guard vessel.
They are expected to reach the southern Italian port city at around 8:30 pm local time.
The migrants were in the third group taken to Albania as part the government's new fast-track processing scheme under an agreement between Rome and Tirana.
The Rome appeals court on Friday night referred their case to the European Court of Justice to determine whether the countries of provenance of the migrants could be deemed safe, "when the substantial conditions for such a designation are not satisfied for certain categories of people".
Italian judges had also refused to validate the detention of the first two groups of asylum seekers (totalling 20 men) taken to Albania back in October and November, under the agreement between Rome and Tirana, referring their cases to the European Court of Justice - which had established on October 4 that an applicant could not go through a fast-track procedure that could lead to their repatriation if their country of provenance was not deemed wholly safe.
The countries of origin in the cases, Bangladesh and Egypt, were not judged to be safe "over all of their territory".
The government has tried to get around this hurdle with a measure listing 19 safe countries for repatriation.
They included both Bangladesh and Egypt.
The government also stripped the immigration sections of ordinary courts which took the first two decisions not to validate the detention, putting them up to appeals courts instead, one of which ruled not to validate the detention of the third batch of migrants on Friday night.
The European Court of Justice is set to rule on the Italian courts' referrals on February 25.
Meanwhile sources at Premier Giorgia Meloni's office Palazzo Chigi said the government was "working to also overcome this obstacle" following the ruling.
Government sources expressed to ANSA "great surprise because we don't believe there is any need to await a decision on the issue of the European Court of Justice".
In a note, the Lower House whip of Premier Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, Galeazzo Bignami, condemned the "resistance of part of the Italian judiciary against measures adopted to guarantee security and fight irregular migration".
Elly Schlein, the leader of the largest member of the centre-left opposition, the Democratic Party (PD), spoke about an "incredible failure" of the government's Albania scheme, asking for a report on the cost of the plan which, she said, "has reached over one billion euros, according to our estimates, which could have been invested to hire doctors and nurses" in public hospitals.
Overall, a total of 49 people were part of the third batch of migrants intercepted south of Lampedusa and taken to Albania last Tuesday by the Cassiopea Navy vessel.
Six were subsequently taken back to Italy because they were minors or considered to be vulnerable.
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