Rome, August 20, 2026 – Sweden and Finland also send asylum seekers back to Italy and, after Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, the group of countries ready to apply the rules of the new European pact for migrants is expanding, while sources from the governments of France and Spain say that Madrid and Paris will not resort to expulsions, preferring mechanisms of cooperation and solidarity already in place with Rome as contemplated by the pact itself.
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Finland
This morning the Finnish Ministry of the Interior announced, according to LaPresse, that the entry into force of the new regulation on asylum and migration management (Asylum and Migration Management Regulation), which replaces the previous Dublin regulation within the EU pact on migration and asylum, allows “the resumption of transfers of asylum seekers to Italy,” when it is recognized as the country of first entry, and that “transfers are currently being prepared.” Finnish Minister Mari Rantanen also added that “we have continued our cooperation and dialogue with Italy over the years,” emphasizing the importance that all member states respect the European pacts. “For Finland,” Minister Rantanen clarified, “it is important that the rules on responsibility for examining asylum applications are applied as provided and that all EU member states fulfill their responsibilities under the Pact. On our part, we remain committed to ensuring the effective implementation of procedures related to determining the responsible state.”
At the moment, however, the Helsinki government has not provided indications on the total number of people who could be involved, nor clarified whether the procedure will concern only asylum seekers who arrived after June 12, the date the new EU pact came into force, or also those already present before.
Sweden
In the afternoon, Stockholm’s position arrived instead. “Sweden has carried out transfers of migrants to Italy and intends to continue doing so, in accordance with the provisions of the Immigration and Asylum Pact,” said Victoria Holmqvist, spokesperson for the Swedish Minister for Migration Johan Forssell, to the Ansa agency. “It is important that our cooperation works well so that migration to Europe is well managed and controlled,” explained the spokesperson, adding that “from the Swedish point of view this is not new, but since the European pact came into force, transfers under the Dublin regulation work better.”
Germany, Switzerland, and Austria
This is the same issue that in recent days has occurred with similar announcements from the governments of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and concerns the so-called “Dubliners,” that is, asylum seekers who, after arriving in a first European country, moved to another Schengen area state, giving rise to the so-called “secondary movements.” According to the “Dublin III” regulation of 2003, those who have already applied for protection in one member state, if they move and submit a new application elsewhere, must be sent back to the country where they were first identified. And obviously, the countries of first entry, Italy foremost, record the highest number of people who move elsewhere after landing.
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The disputed date
The issue to clarify, and subject to contrasting interpretations among various European governments, concerns the date to be considered valid after which an asylum seeker who entered a second state can be sent back to the first country of entry. The dispute is over June 12, the day the new migration and asylum pact came into force, and according to the Italian government’s interpretation, only those who arrived after June 12 can be sent back to the first country, while for cases prior to that date, the count of secondary migrants to be transferred must be reset. An interpretation not shared by Germany, which instead asked Rome to also take back people who arrived before the new system came into force, thus including all those who arrived in the years before last June 12. And, to count how many there are, one should go back to December 2022, when with a circular the Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, in office for just over a month, blocked returns, citing the ongoing negotiations in Brussels on the new rules. A block that led to accumulating about 80,000 requests for responsibility over 4 years, from December 2022 to the end of 2025, against a few dozen actual transfers carried out each year.
The numbers: how many migrants are we talking about?
According to Europast data, in the 4 years before Piantedosi’s block, between 2018 and 2022, 17,605 “Dubliners” asylum seekers were effectively transferred back to Italy, while only during 2025 Italy received 24,152 transfer requests but accepted almost none, a figure that places it at the top of the European ranking ahead of Germany (16,519 requests) and Croatia (12,358). On the opposite side, in 2025 Germany was the country that sent the most transfer requests to other states, 35,933 in total, ahead of France (30,084) and Belgium (12,285). Overall, in 2025 EU countries sent over 111,000 requests among themselves under the Dublin system. The new Pact system, which Rome also joined with the aim of easing the burden of the old Dublin system, allows Italy to be asked to take back those who moved to the rest of Europe but, according to the Meloni government’s interpretation, only those who arrived after June 12.
Rome-Berlin clash
Rome maintains the block on cases prior to June 12, having recently refused 3 transfers of asylum seekers who went to Germany after entering Italy, including a Somali citizen who landed in Lampedusa last March, opening a dispute with Berlin. Sources from the Ministry of the Interior reiterated that “for cases before June 12, a line is drawn,” while the German side insisted on the need to fully apply the new rules and a spokesperson for the Interior Ministry explained that, with the entry into force of the new common European asylum system, “Dublin transfers will again be carried out towards Italy.” The dispute over asylum seekers between Rome and Berlin, followed by Bern, Vienna, and today Helsinki and Stockholm, in short, seems only at the beginning and it does not seem coincidental that it emerged the day after the position against Spain taken by the Meloni government, which suspended the Schengen agreements after the recent migrant crisis in Ceuta.
