Germany has moved to resume Dublin transfers of asylum seekers to Italy and Greece, reopening a mechanism that had largely stopped functioning in relation to Italy. The first transfer to Italy is scheduled for August 19.
The decision emerged on August 9. A German Interior Ministry spokesman told the Italian daily La Repubblica that Berlin expects Dublin transfers to Italy and Greece to resume under the EU’s new asylum framework.
“A functioning Dublin system is a prerequisite for the success of the European asylum reform,” he said, adding that Germany “expects transfers to Italy and Greece to be resumed” under the new rules.
Established by a convention signed in 1990 and recast most recently in 2013, the Dublin system determines which EU member state is responsible for examining an asylum application. In many cases, responsibility falls on the country where an asylum seeker first entered the EU. If the applicant subsequently travels to another member state, that country can request their transfer back to the state deemed responsible.
The Dublin rules are particularly relevant for Italy and Greece because both are major entry points into the EU. Migrants crossing the Mediterranean often arrive first in either country before travelling onwards to northern Europe, including Germany.
Italy suspended incoming Dublin transfers in December 2022, citing technical and reception-capacity problems, and transfers remained largely blocked thereafter. Greece, by contrast, was not subject to the same blanket suspension.
Transfers involving Greece have continued, although at relatively low levels. German figures show 22 people were sent there in 2024, after three in 2023.
In December 2025, interior minister Alexander Dobrindt said Berlin had reached understandings with Rome and Athens under which both would again take back migrants who had entered the EU through their territory, drawing a line under legacy cases, from June 2026.
Germany’s announcement therefore amounts above all to a reopening of transfers to Italy.
Berlin now argues that the EU’s new Migration and Asylum Pact, which entered into application on June 12, 2026, provides the basis for enforcing the responsibility system more rigorously. Its Asylum and Migration Management Regulation, which sets out which member state must examine a claim, is intended to replace the Dublin III Regulation.
How many people could ultimately be transferred remains unclear. Berlin has not published a target or estimate. A German Interior Ministry spokesman said the number of transfers to Italy “depends on many factors”. The potential pool could run into the thousands, given the scale of previous Dublin requests.
In 2024, Germany made 74,583 Dublin transfer requests to other European countries, but only 5,827 transfers were ultimately carried out. Italy received just three people from Germany that year, despite having accepted more than 10,000 requests. The pattern held in 2025, when about 35,900 requests produced 5,377 transfers, and in the first half of 2026, when 11,745 requests produced 1,698 transfers, according to Interior Ministry figures.
The first concrete test will come on August 19, when German authorities are expected to transfer a 22-year-old Somali asylum seeker from Bavaria to Italy. She arrived in Germany on March 31 after travelling through Italy and is considered by German authorities to fall under Italian responsibility. German police are expected to collect her and escort her to Italy.
For Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the decision also carries a strong domestic political dimension. Analysts see the tougher migration line as an attempt to win back voters from the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has overtaken the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), in national polling. Surveys published in July and early August 2026 by Infratest dimap, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen and YouGov have put the AfD at around 27-28 per cent, compared with roughly 21 per cent for the Union.
The pressure is particularly strong ahead of regional elections in eastern Germany. In Saxony-Anhalt, where voters go to the polls on September 6, an Infratest dimap survey published on July 30, 2026, put the AfD at 41 per cent, against 24 per cent for the CDU, raising the prospect of the party emerging as the strongest political force in the state. Merz has sought to appeal to voters who have moved towards the AfD while maintaining his refusal to cooperate with the party.
Italy has rejected Berlin’s move. On August 9, Italian Interior Ministry sources said there were no Dublin cases to take back from Germany. Rome considers claims relating to people who reached Europe before June 12, 2026 to have been settled under agreements signed with Germany and other member states, and argues that too little time has passed since that date to establish whether migrants entering Italy under the new rules have already travelled onwards.
Italian officials have also said any returns should be offset against migrants brought ashore in Italy by NGO rescue vessels.
The European Commission has already recorded friction. In a document published on July 15, 2026, it said eight member states had notified take-charge requests between June 12 and July 7, that 12 transfers to Italy had been sought and that Rome had turned them down. The Commission noted that a receiving member state cannot refuse a transfer and must instead propose an alternative date.
