Interim decree (Article 35-bis(4) of Legislative Decree 25/2008) · N.R.G. 26906-1/2026
Unofficial translation of the SOS Patto summary. The original decision or document is available in Italian only.
Headnote
Article 79(3) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1348 reserves the new rules for applications lodged from 12 June 2026: Directive 2013/32/EU remains applicable to applications lodged before that date. Regulation (EU) 2026/464, whose operation is linked to the entry into application of the Procedures Regulation and which would have redefined judicial review of the designation of a safe country of origin, therefore has no retroactive application: legal certainty and the right of defence require leaving intact the power of the national court to disapply the designation. The designation of Bangladesh as a safe country of origin under Article 2-bis of Legislative Decree 25/2008 must be disapplied as contrary to Article 37 of Directive 2013/32/EU and Annex I, as interpreted by the Court of Justice of the EU of 4 October 2024, C-406/22, and of 1 August 2025, C-758/24 and C-759/24: a third country cannot be designated a safe country of origin where certain categories of persons — here LGBTQI+ persons, victims of gender-based violence, ethnic and religious minorities, persons accused of political offences — are expressly excluded from the safety assessment set out in the ministerial country sheet and in the report to Parliament. It follows that the accelerated procedure under Article 28-bis(2)(c) of Legislative Decree 25/2008 is inapplicable and the ordinary procedure is restored, with suspension by operation of law of the contested measure.
The Tribunal of Milan (judge Francesca Laura Stoppa) declares suspended by operation of law the enforceability of the rejection for manifest unfoundedness issued by the Milan/Monza Commission against a homosexual Bangladeshi national. The premises are two, systemic in nature: identifying the rules applicable ratione temporis and verifying the scope of the national court's residual review of the designation of a safe country in the passage from Directive 2013/32/EU to the Procedures Regulation.
The application was lodged on 28 May 2026, the Commission's decision dates from 5 June. Article 79(3) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1348 reserves the new rules for applications lodged from 12 June 2026, so that in the present case Directive 2013/32/EU remains applicable. The decree draws the consequence for Regulation (EU) 2026/464 — the revision of the «safe country concepts» which, among other things, would limit the court's review to the applicant's individual situation and prohibit disapplication of the designation:
having regard to the fact that the operation of the aforementioned Regulation (EU) 2026/464, which in its very title states the purpose of amending Regulation (EU) 2024/1348, is manifestly linked to the entry into force of the latter, which under Article 79(2) «applies from 12 June 2026»; considering that the right to proper information on the procedure adopted must be guaranteed at every stage of the proceedings (CJEU, 30 November 2023, joined cases C-228/21, C-254/21, C-297/21 and C-315/21); holding therefore that, also in application of the principle of legal certainty and in compliance with the adversarial principle and the right of defence, the new Procedures Regulation cannot apply retroactively.
On this point the ruling delivers a principle that the defence can rely on in every case: where the application was lodged before 12 June 2026, the restrictive regime of review introduced by Regulation (EU) 2026/464 cannot be invoked.
On the merits the decree applies the established CJEU framework: judgment of 4 October 2024, C-406/22 (Article 37 precludes a designation with exceptions for parts of the territory) and, above all, judgment of 1 August 2025, joined cases C-758/24 and C-759/24, which extends the same conclusion to exceptions for categories of persons. The factual premise is documentary: the MAECI country sheet annexed to the Ministerial Decree of 7 May 2024 that designated Bangladesh — later transposed into Article 2-bis of Legislative Decree 25/2008 as amended by Decree-Law 158/2024 — «excludes from the safety assessment persons of non-heterosexual orientation, victims of gender-based violence (including women subjected to female genital mutilation), ethnic and religious minorities, persons accused of crimes of a political nature and persons sentenced to death». The update report of 1 April 2025 confirms the picture: discriminatory laws, criminalisation of homosexual acts (Article 377 of the Bangladeshi Penal Code), police violence and harassment. Hence the disapplication of Article 2-bis in so far as it designates Bangladesh as a safe country.
With the designation gone, point (c) of paragraph 2 of Article 28-bis, on which the Commission had based the acceleration, falls away: the ordinary procedure is restored, with suspension of the measure by operation of law and re-expansion to thirty days of the time limit for appeal. The decision is to be read together with the others published on this site that disapply the safe-country designation for excluded categories, and with the summary on Trib. Napoli 17573/2026, which set out the same reasoning for Bangladesh under the new regime (Article 42(1), point (j), of Regulation (EU) 2024/1348): two parallel readings — one under the directive, the other under the regulation — converging on the same outcome, when the Commission treats the applicant as a «national of a safe country» without probing the category to which he belongs.
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