State of emergency on migrants proclaimed. We are thinking of the tightening of special protection

State of emergency for 6 months to address the migration issue. Last night’s Council of Ministers approved the proposal of the Minister for Civil Protection, Nello Musumeci, to urgently provide for new measures to manage the reception and repatriation of arriving migrants. According to the Interior Ministry, more than 31,000 people have arrived on our shores since January 1, compared with almost 8,000 in the same period last year. To worry Musumeci, but also the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosiis the situation – reads the resolution of the CDM – “of very serious overcrowding in the first reception centers and, in particular, at the Lampedusa hotspot, and the forecasts of a further increase in departures in the coming months”.

Therefore, under the state of emergency it is foreseen an initial loan of 5 million (which will be increased later). In the intentions of the government, the decision will allow for faster procedures, with an exception to the rules for contracts to the prefectures, for reception. A commissioner should take care of it, which could be, even if there is no confirmation yet, the prefect in charge of the department for civil liberties and immigration, Valerio Valenti. The figure of the commissioner will work together with Civil Protection and the Red Cross and will be able to transfer asylum seekers to other cities, open new reception facilities, but also expand existing ones Repatriation detention centresand, as the Deputy Prime Minister has been proposing for years Matthew Salvinibuild new ones and enhance identification and expulsion activities.

It is not the first time that a state of emergency has been proclaimed to deal with immigration: the previous one can be found in 2011, when Silvio Berlusconi was at the helm of the executive. Yet no number, not even those of these first months of 2023, equals those of 2017 when the then Minister of the Interior, Marco Minniti, witnessed the arrival of about 180,000 people in one year. No state of emergency was proclaimed then and, as Minister Musumeci said, even yesterday’s decision “doesn’t solve the problem”. In fact, the Minister for Civil Protection declared: “We have complied with Minister Piantedosi’s request, aware of the seriousness of a phenomenon that is increasing by 300 percent. But the solution to the problem is linked only to a conscious and responsible intervention by the European Union, because we don’t have much time.”

Meanwhile, the Senate Constitutional Affairs Committee is discussing Cutro’s decree. At the heart is the narrowing of the special protection, to which migrants have access if they are not entitled to asylum or subsidiary protection. The intention would be to reduce the number of those entitled to it and make it lapse for those who return to their country of origin, even if only briefly.