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There comes a point when politics stops chasing headlines and starts writing the rules of the game. In recent weeks, on the dossier that has moved votes, governments, and majorities across the Union more than any other—immigration and security—that turning point has a name and a method: Giorgia Meloni. Not because Italy, on its own, can “command” Brussels. But because the line Rome has hammered home for two years—border control, faster procedures, cooperation with third countries, deterrence against smugglers, and an explicit link between migration management and public order—has effectively become the direction toward which Europe’s center of gravity is realigning.
The clearest proof came from the European Parliament. In early February 2026, MEPs approved both the creation of a first EU list of “safe countries of origin” and new rules on the concept of a “safe third country,” with broad support and a telling political split: the European People’s Party, the Conservatives (ECR), and other right-of-center forces formed a critical mass against the resistance of part of the Socialists and liberals. In parallel, the Commission welcomed these measures as an operational preview of the Migration and Asylum Pact, set to apply fully from June 2026. Put simply: Europe is building faster, tougher tools to screen applications, manage borders, and make returns credible. And that is exactly what Meloni demanded from the start, when many—especially in media salons—dismissed her agenda as mere propaganda. Today, those same keywords have become institutional vocabulary: “security,” “inadmissibility,” “safe countries,” “externalization,” “bilateral agreements,” “accelerated procedures.”
This is not just a technical adjustment. It is a shift in political philosophy—and therefore in sovereignty. For years, the dominant narrative treated irregular immigration as a fatality: a phenomenon to be administered with internal “solidarity” and a few procedural tweaks, while carefully avoiding the decisive point—effective control of entry. The result was a paradox: more rules, less control; more humanitarian rhetoric, more criminal business along the Mediterranean route. The implicit “model” was one of permanent emergency—useful to many bureaucracies and many NGOs, but devastating for European citizens, especially in neighborhoods where migration pressure translates into social tension, petty crime, and a growing perception of insecurity.
Meloni broke that paradox. If the state does not decide who enters and on what terms, it protects neither its citizens nor the migrants who genuinely have a right to protection. It protects, instead, the traffickers. And when politics stops talking about traffickers and talks only about “welcome,” it ends up serving those who monetize chaos. That is why the European move on “safe countries” is politically so significant. The EU list of countries of origin deemed safe—and the new rules expanding the use of the “safe third country” concept—has a clear objective: reduce the abuse of asylum as a shortcut for irregular economic migration, by accelerating procedures and making it easier to declare an application inadmissible when there is a concrete alternative of protection elsewhere.
Critics describe this as the “dismantling” of the right to asylum; in reality, it is an attempt to save it from inflation: if everything becomes asylum, then nothing is asylum. And a protection system without borders is destined to lose political consent, until it blows up.
The crucial point is that this line was not born in a Brussels laboratory. It grew out of the concrete pressure exerted by frontline countries like Italy, and from Meloni’s decision to turn a national problem into a European battle. It is no coincidence that, in the reading of many international observers, Europe’s recent steps “open the door” to innovative solutions that closely resemble Italy’s attempt to externalize part of the management to third countries—such as the protocol with Albania.
Those who contest these solutions usually invoke two arguments. The first: countries labeled “safe” are not truly safe for everyone. It is a serious objection, but it does not erase the central knot: every asylum system needs an operational threshold, otherwise it collapses. And it is telling that even the European Parliament chose to proceed, fully aware that rights and guarantees will become ground for litigation and judicial scrutiny.
The second argument: these policies “do not stop departures.” Here too, reality is more complex than a slogan. Deterrence is not an on/off switch; it is an equilibrium among controls, returns, agreements with transit countries, and the dismantling of criminal networks. If one of these elements is missing, the system loses credibility. And Europe, today, is trying precisely to build that architecture.
The security dimension is the second pillar of the “Meloni victory.” Because Europe’s shift does not concern asylum alone: it concerns the politically explosive principle that irregular immigration is also a matter of public order and national security. Not in the caricatural sense of “everyone is dangerous,” but in the institutional sense: uncontrolled entries mean unverified identities, vulnerability to criminal infiltration, pressure on the peripheries, and stress on police forces and welfare systems. It is the ABC of any serious state. And it is precisely on this ridge line that, in Italy, the government has relented in a strong way: the Council of Ministers approved a new immigration package that includes powers to impose a form of “naval blockade” in situations of exceptional pressure or threats to security, alongside sanctions and measures against those who violate prohibitions in territorial waters.
What matters here is not only the technical merit of the measure—which will go through the Italian Parliament and will inevitably be challenged—but the political message: the state returns to claiming control of borders as a prerogative of sovereignty, without complexes and without apologizing.
In short: Meloni understood earlier than others that Europe’s battle over immigration is won by moving the rules. She worked to normalize concepts that until recently were taboo: agreements with third countries, centers outside the EU, “security” lists, broader inadmissibility, faster procedures. Today those words are inside voted acts, Commission communications, and European parliamentary chronicles.
Of course, every “victory” is relative and provisional. The decisive question remains open: execution. European history is full of ambitious pacts left incomplete by administrative inertia, national resistance, or legal disputes. And on migration the friction will be maximal, because the tension between control and guarantees inevitably produces appeals, judgments, and implementation limits. Moreover, the credibility of returns will depend on the ability to strike effective agreements with countries of origin and transit—and on the political will to apply them. Saying “safe country” is not enough to put a return flight in the air. But politics is, first and foremost, direction. And Europe’s direction has changed. It has changed because governments, including those not “sovereigntist,” have understood that without border control the Union does not hold—socially or politically. And it has changed because an Italian leader, with a profile many in Brussels once considered “peripheral,” turned Italy from a country that absorbs decisions into a country that shapes them.
This is the substance of Meloni’s “victory” in Europe: a cultural reversal. Immigration is no longer a subject for automatic moralism; it is a matter of government. And governing means choosing, filtering, returning, preventing, defending. Security returns to what it has always been: the precondition of freedom. The final paradox is that this very turn could save, in the medium term, the European idea itself. Because the Union can afford almost anything—except appearing powerless. A Europe that proves it can decide on borders and protect its citizens regains legitimacy. And if today Strasbourg and Brussels speak more realistically of accelerated procedures, “safe countries,” and external cooperation, it is because Rome insisted, negotiated, and pushed until others’ caution turned into necessity.
Meloni did not “Europeanize” Italy: she Italianized the European debate, bringing it back onto the ground of concreteness. And it is on that ground—whether her detractors like it or not—that European politics will be judged in the years ahead.