Six countries announce transfers of asylum seekers to Italy, Budapest opts out

The Europe section opened this morning with German figures on returns supported by federal funds. This piece concerns another chain of decisions, moving in the opposite direction: not departures from Europe toward third countries, but the movement of asylum seekers from one State to another within the continent.

On August 21, 2026, the government of the Netherlands announced that it will return to Italy migrants who arrived after June 12 (Napoli Magazine). The announcement adds to those already made by Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Finland and Sweden: according to LaPresse, it is the new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum that makes these transfers to the country of first arrival feasible. The Dublin Regulation, which remains the legal reference, assigns the examination of the application to the State where the applicant first entered the Union.

The picture, however, is not uniform. The Hungarian government has stated that it will not accept any transfer (Domani). This is the central contradiction of this phase: the same regulatory framework is invoked by some governments to send people southward and rejected by another to avoid receiving them. None of the available sources currently document sanctions or proceedings initiated against Budapest over this position.

It must be stated clearly what the material does not contain. No figures have been published on the transfers actually carried out to Italy by any of the six countries that announced them, nor on the timeframe planned for implementation. A government announcement and a materially completed transfer are two different things, and the gap between the two, in the implementation history of Dublin, has historically been wide. Until verifiable administrative data appear, the only established fact is the political statement.

The date indicated by The Hague helps gauge the practical scope of the announcement: June 12 acts as a dividing line, and therefore concerns only subsequent arrivals, not the entire stock of pending applications in the Netherlands. The other announcements should also be read with the same caution: the list of countries grows, but quantification remains absent.

For Italy, the expected effect is an additional administrative burden on the commissions examining applications, proportional to the number of transfers actually carried out. This is the missing data point that will make it possible, in the coming weeks, to distinguish between an actual regime change and a series of parallel statements. Redazione Zero will follow the publication of national figures on Dublin transfers carried out in 2026.

Sources: LaPresse (origin: national governments’ announcements on Dublin transfers); Napoli Magazine (origin: announcement by the government of the Netherlands); Domani (origin: statements by the Hungarian government and other European governments). Three independent sources.