Italy’s government has declared 19 countries safe for migrants as part of a new law designed to salvage its €670 million plan to process asylum seekers in Albania.

In an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday night, the Giorgia Meloni-led coalition decreed that of its original list of 22 countries touted for repatriation, 19 are safe across their whole territory.

They include Bangladesh, Egypt, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, Sri Lanka and Tunisia. Together they account for a large proportion of the tens of thousands of migrants who try to reach Italy each year, many of them crossing in boats from North Africa.

Three countries were excluded from the original list: Cameroon, Colombia and Nigeria, on the basis that parts of those countries are unsafe.

Ms Meloni’s project was thrown into disarray on Friday when a court in Rome ruled that migrants could not be returned to countries that were not judged to be safe across their entire territory.