RomaThe government of Giorgia Meloni approved this Monday a decree-law shielding the list of countries it considers safe, in an attempt to expedite the repatriation of migrants arriving in Italian territory and to limit the action of judges, who are putting obstacles in the his model of deportation. The legislative loopholes of Albania model have allowed judges to overturn the centers built in the Balkan country the same week they were inaugurated, and the Italian executive is now trying to amend them.
At the heart of the matter is the judicial setback that last week the Court of Rome gave to the migration management model promoted by Meloni, which happens to finance a center in Albania to transfer asylum seekers rescued in international waters by Italian ships. The judges, in application of a recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union, refused to validate the repatriation procedure of the 12 people from Egypt and Bangladesh inside the center since Wednesday and ordered their immediate return in Italy Only a few hours earlier, the Italian authorities had rejected the asylum applications of all of them, considering that the countries of origin of the migrants are safe.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promoted a decree in May that set 22 countries considered safe, for which it recognized exceptions, such as certain categories of people or political dissidents. Among those countries was Bangladesh, despite the Asian country’s political crisis and discrimination against members of the LGBTI community, who face life in prison for their status. This allows the asylum requests of immigrants from the region to be rejected, which in the first six months of the year alone were more than 27% of the total of those who landed on Italian shores. However, the recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU indicates that, to be considered safe, a country must be “everywhere and for every person”; that is to say, “there can be no persecution, discrimination or torture towards anyone in any area of the territory”.
With the decree law approved this Monday, the government reduces the list to 19 (excluding Colombia, Nigeria and Cameroon) and makes it difficult for judges to oppose it, as it is a decree law .
The judicial cop model Meloni of immigration management has highlighted the gaps in the experiment, which start from the moment migrants are rescued at sea. The Albania-Italy Protocol, signed by the prime minister and her Albanian counterpart, provides that only men of legal age in good health, from countries considered safe and rescued by Italian ships in international waters, can be transferred to the country balkan This leaves out almost 80% of the migrants who reach Italian shores.
Attack on justice
This situation has triggered in Italy a already seen. More than ten years have passed since parliamentarians and supporters of Forza Italia, the party founded by the late Silvio Berlusconi, took to the streets to defend the leader against what they considered attacks by a politicized justice system. “The red robes”, as the former prime minister dubbed them, had sentenced the politician and businessman to lifelong disqualification for the crimes of abuse of power and incitement to the prostitution of minors. A decade later, the heirs and historical partners of the Cavaliere have launched a new campaign against justice, whom they accuse of maneuvering against the executive led by Giorgia Meloni.
This Monday the Italian Prime Minister published on social networks the message of a judge sent to the group of the National Association of Magistrates in which he apparently warned about the danger represented by the leader of the Brothers of Italy, who unlike Berlusconi does not attack the judiciary for personal interests. “Giorgia Meloni is driven by political visions, and this makes his action much more dangerous… We must remedy it,” prosecutor Marco Patarnello wrote to his colleagues.
In reality, in the same message – which Meloni and the newspaper that published it took care to cut by omitting this second part – the magistrate in question makes it clear that it is not the job of the judges “to make political opposition, but to defend the jurisdiction and the right of citizens to have an independent judge”. This has not prevented Patarnello from becoming the target of attacks by some members of the government.
Meloni has evoked a conspiracy of the judges and the opposition, which would aim to delegitimize his political action, while the president of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, has proposed reforming the Constitution to better define the powers of the judiciary. A statement that has been considered extremely serious by the opposition Democratic Party.
Brussels reminds Meloni that he must comply with EU law
After the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, praised Giorgia Meloni’s plan to deport immigrants, Brussels reminded her this Monday that she must “fully” respect the right of the European Union in the new decree which he wants to approve to avoid the sentence of the Italian justice. “What applies is national law, but also the rules linked to international protection provided for by Community law”, said the spokeswoman for the European Commission, Anitta Hipper, in a press conference.
This warning contrasts with the good reception that Meloni’s idea of creating camps outside the territory of the EU to deport migrants has been received by Von der Leyen and a majority of the member states. Even in last week’s European Council, the door was opened to propose laws to boost deportations, and the president of the European Commission promised that she would present new legislative proposals in this regard. Now, Brussels in 2018, for example, said that initiatives of this kind like those of Meloni did not comply with international and humanitarian law, and the Commissioner of the Interior, Ylva Johansson, assured a few weeks ago that they did not they would promote measures like this because they do not respect the “human dignity” of the newcomer.
