The stated aim of a March 28 decision by the regional council of Italy's Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) is to manage "the presence of facilities for unaccompanied foreign minors in a more orderly manner".

The councillor for security and immigration in this northeastern region, Pierpaolo Roberti, said that the move was made to provide for "a number of places more balanced when put aside the local population and the characteristics of the territory."

FVG is along the so-called Balkan Route for migration.

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Aims to remove current 'chaos'

"With this decision, we are finally putting the reception system for unaccompanied foreign minors in order. The system had recently become rather chaotic, leaving the territory and the community to fend for themselves and causing events that forced FVG to respond -- and this was unfair -- also to the needs of the municipalities of other regions that transferred their quotas of foreign minors here," Roberti said.

The councillor added that the region wants to end a situation that "has impacted the territory, especially as concerns aspects linked to security, control, and possible problems due to tension and integration difficulties."

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Three criteria basis for new system

Three principles were the basis for the new criteria, the councillor noted. The first takes into account regional requirements, which he said would ensure that local administrations of other regions would no longer be able to "unfairly, transfer foreign minors to Friuli Venezia Giulia while businesses and cooperatives continued to ask for the opening of new facilities."

The second is linked to population density. "We want to act in such a way that, in particularly populated neighborhoods, especially in the provincial capitals, we can avoid additional facilities for foreign minors being built in places with a high population density, thereby avoiding resulting security-related problems that would otherwise derive from such a situation."

Roberti added that the third was linked to impact on the population, "in order to safeguard the smallest communities where there is the possibility to open a facility with even dozens of places for reception."

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