Ten thousand people. That is how many Italy’s government wants to send home this year, a number its interior minister calls historic. A petition pushing the same goal across the whole EU has just failed in Brussels, ruled discriminatory by ethnicity. Rome is not slowing down regardless.
A group of far-right activists wanted to freeze migration from outside the West altogether. Their petition, called “Save Europe Act“, has now been blocked: the European Commission declined to register it as a European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) last week.
Italy is already pursuing a similar goal. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi has dismissed Roberto Vannacci’s petition as a clever communication move, no different from what his government is doing regardless: “We might hope to repatriate 10,000 people by this year, a historic figure.”
The Commission found that the petition fails to meet the formal requirements set out in the Regulation on European Citizens’ Initiatives. On 22 July, it ruled that “Save Europe Act” relies on the ethnic, cultural or civic origin of individuals rather than the individual, case-by-case assessment the law requires, in breach of the values enshrined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union. The Commission also found it risked serving as a vehicle for offensive or caricatural messages. Roberto Vannacci (ESN/ITA), its Italian leader, was among its backers.
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A discriminatory basis
In practice, the freeze would have reached far beyond asylum seekers. The petition called on the Commission to “propose a Union act establishing a temporary moratorium on new channels of non-Western immigration, including student and family reunification visas, while substantially reforming the EU’s migration and asylum system”.
Its organisers, mostly ESN members in the European Parliament and their followers, framed the proposal around the “ethnic and cultural continuity” of the “indigenous peoples of Europe”, as opposed to what they called “demographic replacement” by “non-Western” and “non-European” migrants.
The regional front
Although Brussels has blocked the petition, the push for remigration is not confined to Rome. In Lombardy, the Regional Council approved a motion from the Lega, Vannacci’s former party, now part of the Patriots group, calling for “promoting the remigration to their countries of origin of non-EU prisoners nearing the end of their sentences” through “an experimental regional programme”. The motion passed during a budget debate, though with a smaller majority than expected. Lombardy’s President, Attilio Fontana, recently called it a “common-sense proposal”.
We might hope to repatriate 10,000 people by this year, a historic figure.
— Matteo Piantedosi, Italian Interior Minister
It remains to be seen how national law will sit alongside European law. The EU Pact on Migration & Asylum, which entered into application on 12 June, already allows for repatriation under EU rules. The rejected petition, unlike the Pact, would have applied that logic by ethnic and cultural origin rather than individual case.
