From Germany to Switzerland, from France to Belgium, the Meloni administration has been accused of failing to register asylum refugees and allowing them to enter their countries.
 |
| Illegal migrants camp in Europe |
Marco Romano is a center-right politician who, despite his name, is not Italian. Indeed, he has regularly criticized Italy in recent days. What's the reason? Italy would overwhelm his country with illegal immigrants. Some EU nations raised this charge against Giorgia Meloni's cabinet during the last Brussels summit. "Italians refuse to take back asylum seekers," declared Belgian minister Nicole de Moor, also of the centre-right, last week. He represents the opposite side of migration in Europe, the so-called secondary flows. Under pressure from the Netherlands and others, the EU Commission has indicated that it plans to apply a squeeze.
Secondary Movement
"Secondary movements are a real worry in some member nations," European Commissioner Mairead McGuinness said as she announced the next stages in the EU's migration agenda. "We must minimize them and limit the incentives for secondary movements - she continued - We will cooperate with nations to guarantee that the Dublin route is applied". Absolutely, since the Dublin rule, as it is known, states that it is the responsibility of the nations of entry, such as Italy and Greece, to welcome refugees in the first place. To do this, these nations must first record all asylum petitions and then continue with the repatriation of individuals who do not have the right to refuge.
Yet, reception and repatriation are costly, and the bureaucratic processes are time-consuming. So, according to what the countries of Central and Northern Europe assert (although not as of today), the Italian and Greek authorities have adopted the practice of not registering certain migrants or registering them as minors when possible. This will make it simpler for them to flee to the rest of the continent, such as France, Germany, Belgium, and Holland, which are among the most popular destinations for people who land on our shores.
The German alarm
The data would back up Italy's assertions. The report of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (Bamf) has generated a sensation in Germany in recent days. Among the 151,277 refugees who came in Germany in 2022 to claim for asylum, as many as two thirds (i.e. 101,000) "had no match on Eurodac". Eurodac is the European fingerprint database that all EU member states must use for registering asylum seekers and individuals captured when unlawfully crossing a European Union border.
If a state, say, Italy, enrolls a migrant in Eurodac, it must then deal with him in terms of reception or repatriation: if he flees and goes to another EU nation, Italy must accept him back. But, if he does not utilize Eurodac and the migrant travels to, say, Germany, the German authorities are obligated to register and welcome (or deport at their own expense) the individual in issue. And it is just this assumption that numerous EU nations have voiced, namely that Italy employs ploys to facilitate the flow of migrants from its territory to the rest of Europe.
The Swiss case
Yet it isn't the only ruse. The Swiss case is emblematic: under a Berne agreement, Italy has pledged to return asylum seekers who cross the Swiss border within 24 hours using a streamlined procedure. But, the deal is ineffective: of the 2,900 persons detained by Bern police on the southern border in December, Italy has returned just 573. That's 20 individuals every day on average. Almost 54,000 migrants came in Switzerland in 2022, the great majority of them were from our nation.
Fortunately for him, the Swiss state has additional borders that illegal migrants readily pass (when leaving cantons) to reach their preferred destinations: Germany, France, and Austria. Nevertheless, it is these nations who have the biggest number of asylum applications (despite the fact that they are not first-landing territories): in 2021, Germany, for example, had 190,000 claims for protection (a third of the EU total), and France had 120 thousand. At 53,000, Italy ranks fourth after Spain. Not much more than Austria and Belgium (38,000 and 24,000, respectively), whose populations are far less than ours.
Another tactic used to encourage migrants to flee Italy is to register as many children as possible: "If the Italians register a person as a juvenile upon arrival, we can no longer deny him, unless we don't want a diplomatic controversy," revealed a French police official at the border with Ventimiglia. "When the boats arrive, the Italian authorities examine whether or not a migrant appears to be a minor. A two-year buffer is used, always in favor of children," said Fulvio Vassallo Paleologo, a professor at the University of Palermo and an expert on migration.
This circumstance simply exacerbates the European political debate on Dublin regulatory reform. "The EU's entry and transit countries are criminally violating their duty to register the data of migrants without a visa," said Joachim Herrmann, minister of the German state of Bavaria, whose party is the backbone of the EPP, the EU's main political force. "The fact that more and more people are entering the EU completely unchecked is also a growing security risk," he warned.
If Italy requests that the rest of Europe take over the reception of migrants who arrive on our shores, the rest of Europe responds that they are already doing so, accepting those who "escaped" the Italian authorities' supervision. For a long time, there have been allegations and counter-accusations. And, for the time being, no remedy has been identified.
The author Dario Prestigiacomo is a Brussels based Italian journalist.