Municipalities in Italy's Bologna area have signed an agreement that sets up a registry list for asylum seekers. The goal of the 'rescue-migrants' pact is to bypass rules established by the Salvini migrant and security decree.
Several municipalities in Northern Italy have reached an agreement to circumvent rules set by the controversial migrant and security decree drafted by Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. The accord, which has been referred to as a 'rescue-migrants' pact, was signed by several mayors in the Bologna area, which is home to around 120,000 people. Other signees are the Italian CGIL, CISL and UIL trade union confederations.
According to local media reports, the main goals of the agreement are establishing a registry list of all asylum seekers, giving asylum seekers access to professional training courses and starting a dialogue with private bodies to enable migrants to open a current bank account with a stay permit.
'Efforts laid to waste'
The signed agreement claims that the Salvini decree had "laid to waste efforts" made in the metropolitan area of Bologna and the Reno, Lavino Samoggia Union, and that "the lack of integration paths may lead to a further rise of people living in extreme poverty and of those potentially susceptible to engaging in illegal activities."
For these reasons, the agreement aims at putting work back at the center of migrant reception policies, and involve the three trade union confederations in this effort. The signing mayors all belong to the Democratic Party (PD): Massimo Bosso (Casalecchio di Reno), Stefano Rizzoli (Monte San Pietro), Stefano Mazzetti (Sasso Marconi), Daniele Ruscigno (Valsamoggia) and Stefano Fiorini (Zola Predosa).
This spring, when the vast majority of municipalities in the metropolitan area of Bologna will be called upon to vote, the center-left runs risk of losing its longstanding hegemony in the area.
'Best possible response' to Salvini decree
"The agreement represents the best possible response to all those, the interior minister first and foremost, who sow panic simply for electoral ends," said Casalecchio CGIL secretary Gianni Monte, while CISL's Alberto Schincaglia said the agreement ''represents another part of a path marked by the firm will to pursue democratic values of solidarity that have always been characteristic of us."
In the eyes of UIL's Luciano Roncarelli, the main objective of the agreement is to support the "indispensable need to open dialogue with the interior minister and the government," for the Salvini decree will have a "inevitable ... harmful repercussions on both an economic and social character as well as on the security of the area itself," Roncarelli added.