InfoMigrants

Two years ago, Giorgia Meloni became prime minister after promising to restrict migration during her campaign. Since then, she has established policies to limit the arrival of migrants, restrict residence permits and increase deportations. Recently, Italy struck a deal with Albania to send migrants who have arrived in Italy there.

Two years into her term as Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni has established herself among several European leaders as a model of anti-immigration policy. In particular with her latest measure: sending migrants who arrived in Italy to Albania. However, the transfer of the first twelve migrants, who arrived in Albanian centers on October 15, has already been canceled by the Italian courts.

For two years, the leader has implemented a whole array of laws designed to slow the arrival of migrants and complicate the work of rescue associations in the Mediterranean.

Before coming to power on October 22, 2022, Giorgia Meloni campaigned on establishing a naval blockade around Italy to prevent migrants from reaching the country. The measure was quickly abandoned, but in December 2022, the Council of Ministers approved the Piantedosi decree, named after the Italian Minister of the Interior.

Attacks on NGOs

The decree requires ships to immediately request a port of disembarkation to which they must head "without delay" after a rescue intervention, rather than staying at sea to help the occupants of other boats in danger.

The decree also requires the crew of rescue ships to inform the migrants they welcome on board of the possibility of requesting international protection in any country of the European Union and not only in the country of disembarkation.

Captains of humanitarian ships violating these rules are liable to fines of up to 50,000 euros and repeated violations can be punished by immobilizing of the ship. Several ships have been immobilized for several months in recent years for this reason.

Toughening legislation

In April 2023, when the island of Lampedusa was experiencing large arrivals, Italy declared a state of migratory emergency for six months. This provided for the appointment of a special commissioner to manage immigration. A fund of five million euros was also created to address the overcrowding of Lampedusa.

Barely a month later, in May 2023, the Cutro decree went into effect. This new legislative text, named in reference to the city of Calabria where a tragic shipwreck took place in February 2023, toughened migration law anew.

The law limited "special protection", a residence permit granted to migrants who cannot benefit from asylum or subsidiary protection.

The government also announced in this text that it wanted to build "repatriation detention centers” in the 20 regions of the country. There are currently 10 sites in Italy, with a total capacity of 1,500 spots. The people held there live in dire conditions, already denounced by opposition politicians, activists and the European Court of Human Rights.

Under the Cutro decree, migrants considered illegal are able to be held longer in detention centers: the maximum detention period was increased from 120 to 135 days.

Bone tests for minors

At the end of 2023, a new bill called Cutro 2 was adopted. This new law toughened the reception conditions for minor migrants, establishing the possibility of housing unaccompanied minors over the age of 16 in reception centers for adults, for a maximum period of 5 months.

Cutro 2 also extended the duration to house minors under the age of 16 in dedicated centers, from 30 to 45 days. And the Italian authorities also introduced physical examinations – bone tests, for example, in spite of them being known for their fallibility – to prove whether a migrant is under 18.

Finally, the decree gives a judge the possibility of ordering the deportation of a migrant in the event that he or she has made a false declaration about his or her age.

In the event of intense migratory flows, Cutro 2 also makes it possible to ignore and go over the capacities of detention centers: by 50 percent in facilities for minors and 100 percent in those for adults.

With this new legislation, anyone found guilty, even with a non-final sentence, of bodily harm to minors or disabled individuals can no longer enter Italy. The country's doors are also closed to migrants who have committed crimes "related to practices of female genital mutilation" or that have caused "permanent facial injuries". Finally, the time limit for appealing deportation for a foreigner holding a long-term residence permit in the European Union (EU) is reduced from 30 to 15 days.

Additional work visas

At the same time, the government has significantly increased the number of work visas for non-EU nationals, particularly in the agricultural and tourism sectors, while simplifying the procedures.

While in 2018 and 2019 fewer than 31,000 temporary workers were allowed into Italy each year, the government has planned for more than 450,000 over three years by 2025.

Giorgia Meloni has also promised reforms to prevent criminal networks from exploiting loopholes in the system, leading to a small percentage of temporary workers actually signing a work contract with their employers.

Agreements with African countries

The government's plan to reduce irregular arrivals also includes cooperation with the Libyan coast guard. Since February 2017, Italy has been funding training and sending equipment to the Libyan coast guard so that they can stop migrant boats in the Mediterranean and bring them back to Libya.

It is on this model that in the summer of 2023, the European Union concluded an agreement with Tunisia. Giorgia Meloni, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte went to Tunis to sign the text. Focused on the fight against irregular immigration, the agreement also aims to support the country which is experiencing serious economic difficulties. Giorgia Meloni has also traveled alone to Tunisia several times since 2023 to negotiate migration and economic agreements.

In all, since coming to power, the leader has gone to Africa 14 times, including 11 times to North Africa, as reported by Les Echos. Among the projects that Giorgia Meloni defended during these visits to the continent, there is the "Mattei Plan for Africa", announced in 2022, which aims for the economic development of Africa to reduce immigration.

In January 2024, Italy announced 5.5 billion euros of investments intended for the continent. "Subsequently, according to some sources, it appeared that the countries concerned by the projects would be Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, the Republic of Congo and Ivory Coast, but the projects are still being defined; similarly, no concrete measures have been announced on the subject of immigration", Jean-Pierre Darnis, Franco-Italian relations expert at the Université Côte d'Azur told The Conversation.

A strategy welcomed in Europe

Other countries facing the same migration challenges have welcomed Giorgia Meloni's approach, even on the left. During a recent visit to Italy, British Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer praised Italy’s "remarkable progress" in this area.

France’s new Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau lamented that EU law makes it "almost impossible" to repatriate migrants to their home countries. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, meanwhile, said the EU should further explore the idea of "return centers" for migrants outside its borders, saying it could "learn lessons" from the Italy-Albania experience.