Council of Europe denounces Italy’s “increasingly xenophobic” policy, slams interference on judges and migrants

Brussels – Amid the Albania affaire, with heavy accusations by several ministers of the Meloni government against the “red togas,” the Council of Europe takes an alarming snapshot of an Italy in which “public discourse has become increasingly xenophobic” and a political class that “undermines the independence of the judiciary when dealing with immigration cases.”

The timing chosen by the Council of Europe’s Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) to publish the report adopted as early as July 2 is perfect. In recent weeks, the violence of political discourse against judges has surged: not only the government’s furious reactions to the ruling of the Rome court sending back to Italy the 12 migrants destined for Albanian centres but also Matteo Salvini’s crusade against the judges in Palermo over the Open Arms trial.

Thus, the independent human rights monitoring body set up by the Council of Europe has an easy time seeing its findings confirmed over a much broader period. And that also includes some notes of merit. ECRI’s last report on Italy was dated 2016: in these eight years, “progress has been made, and good practices have developed in various areas.” The report cites the introduction of civic education in primary and secondary schools, the national strategy against anti-Semitism and that for the LGBT+ community, the recognition of same-sex unions, and the establishment of financial support for centres against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Otherwise, the document is a vale of tears. It concerns institutions at various levels, from schools to government, via law enforcement and the relationship between the powers of the state. The school curricula “still do not make direct references to the promotion of LGBT+ equality, the teaching of gender identity and sexual orientation.” A good portion of the Italian political class openly ostracises it. Once through the school gates, the LGBT+ community “continues to face prejudice and discrimination in everyday life.” Moreover, according to ECRI, the procedure for legal gender recognition “continues to be complicated, lengthy and overly medicalised.”

The LGBT+ community, Roma, asylum seekers, migrant people, and even Italian citizens with migrant backgrounds, are the favourite victims of a public discourse that has “become increasingly xenophobic,” with political speeches—even by “high-level politicians”—that “have taken on strongly divisive and antagonistic tones.” Real “hate speech.” Here, too, ECRI’s report finds striking confirmation in retrospect; just think of the affair of the young Malian man who attacked officers in Verona and was killed by a policeman. An incident to which Transport Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini commented, “With all due respect, we will not miss him.”

ECRI also calls out law enforcement: “There are numerous accounts of racial profiling by law enforcement, especially targeting Roma and people of African descent,” experts claim, and that is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. In a post on her X account, Meloni strenuously defended the “men and women who, every day, work with dedication and self-sacrifice to ensure the safety of all citizens, without distinction.” People who “deserve respect, not such insults,” the premier attacked. Even harsher was Salvini’s comment, who called the ECRI “a useless body also  paid by the taxes of Italian citizens.” For the Lega leader, “If these gentlemen like Roma and illegal immigrants so much, let them all take them to their homes in Strasbourg.” An attitude similar to that already seen in early August, when the Italian government rejected the criticism formulated by the European Commission in the Rule of Law Report, choosing instead to polemicise the report’s alleged instrumentalisation by the media.

However, the report’s most topical criticism is on the interference of politics in judicial cases involving migration. “Excessive criticism of individual judges handling migration cases undermines their independence,” begins ECRI, which has recorded numerous instances of “verbal attacks on civil society figures who support migrants and undue criticism aimed at undermining the authority of individual judges deciding migration-related cases. “In general,” the report concludes, the atmosphere created by political discourse on the topic of migration “creates severe obstacles to the effective integration and inclusion of migrants, undermines the activities of nongovernmental organisations that provide support to migrants, and undermines the independence of the judiciary when dealing with immigration cases.”