‘Remigration’ decree blitzed through Senate, a coup for the far right

‘The measure impacts highly sensitive matters such as personal freedom,’ Magi says. It is a race to get the text to the President's desk at the Quirinal Palace by midnight on Friday.

It doesn’t outright say it – but surreptitiously, through an amendment signed by the entire ruling majority, the Security Decree approved on Friday in the Senate introduces a provision that smacks of “remigration” – a concept the right has been mainstreaming for some time.

One has to scroll through the list of amendments to reach Article 30, one of the measures voted on in the Senate following a 10-hour marathon session on Thursday. The latest addition is Article 30-bis, which modifies the 1998 Consolidated Immigration Act and its “assisted repatriation” programs. Under the new text, these programs will no longer be arranged solely with international organizations and NGOs working with migrants.

The Interior Ministry will now be able to sign agreements for “voluntary repatriation” programs with the National Bar Council (CNF), the official body representing lawyers. Attorneys who assist a foreign national who decided to participate in one of these programs will receive, once the paperwork is finished and the migrant has left, a fee equal to the “financial contribution for initial needs.” According to an Interior Ministry decree, this amount – €615 – is already paid out to a migrant who decides to leave. 

The logic seems clear: if it is too difficult to convince foreign nationals to join these programs (only 2,500 did so between 2023 and 2025), lawyers will be incentivized to assist them and file the application for them to get this cash bonus. The text also specifies the allocated funds for this purpose: €246,000 for 2026 and €492,000 for 2027 and 2028, pulled from the Economy and Finance Ministry's reserve funds. This would be enough for fewer than 2,000 repatriations.

But this is not the only anti-migrant provision in the decree. The same amendment to Article 30 also changes the rules on deportations following a criminal conviction, one of the alternative sentences that a judge can order in some cases. Now, the supervising magistrate overseeing the decision will have to prioritize the deportation request over any other motion and will have to issue a ruling within 15 days. Furthermore, again on the subject of lawyers, an article in the decree effectively eliminates state-funded legal aid for migrants who have filed lawsuits against their deportations. Meanwhile, those same lawyers are given financial incentives to convince their clients to leave the country.

The Lega has already started claiming credit for the new provisions, busy celebrating since Friday and preparing for Saturday's rally in Milan alongside the rest of the Patriots for Europe group, to the rallying cry of “Masters in our own home.” The government's new crackdown on border policies seems to have also freed Brothers of Italy (FdI) from all previous qualms regarding “remigration” and far-right groups. On April 24 in Naples, legislation drafted by the neo-fascist movement CasaPound will be presented with the participation of Gennaro Sangiuliano, the FdI regional group leader.

The battle over the decree is not over, however, and the right-wing's worst enemy is time, since the decree must be converted into law by April 25. The draft passed the Senate on Friday morning: voting closed at 11 a.m. and two hours later the bureau of the Chamber of Deputies’ Constitutional Affairs Committee had already convened, through which the decree must pass before reaching the floor. It must be stressed that the amended text had not even been forwarded by the relevant offices yet; deputies took their seats with nothing to vote on. “Mr. President, look, the Constitution says that a decree expires after 60 days, not that it is mandatory to convert it into law,” pointed out Filiberto Zaratti of the Green and Left Alliance (AVS).

The committee's first session took place on Friday at 3 p.m. Amendments needed to be submitted by 6 p.m. on Saturday, and they will all be reviewed in a single marathon session on Monday from 9 a.m. to midnight. This is partly because the ruling majority is forced to be present in the Chamber by Tuesday morning to meet the deadline: a few hours of general debate and preliminary motions, before putting it to a confidence vote in the afternoon. And starting Wednesday, a new marathon begins around the confidence vote itself, speeches laying out the positions taken and agenda items. It is a race to get the text to the President's desk at the Quirinal Palace by midnight on Friday.

+Europa party secretary Riccardo Magi sent a letter to Chamber President Lorenzo Fontana denouncing the abnormal shortening of timeframes and reduction in the parliament’s prerogatives: “The measure impacts highly sensitive matters such as personal freedom. For parties, like my own, that have no representation in the Senate, the infringement is even more evident. A merely symbolic review puts Parliament to shame.” 

With his radical political background, Magi is among the more than 150 opposition deputies who best understand the meaning of “obstructionism” as a tactic. And stalling the review when the timeline is so tight can be a valuable weapon. If one tallies up the agenda items and the speeches explaining one’s vote – which can be made individually for decrees – the potential time available to the opposition amounts to 40 hours, unless the Chamber president intervenes. 

“It’s very difficult, but to pull it off, all the opposition parties must be committed and united,” Magi explained. Even if the attempt to derail the process fails, it would have the effect of pushing the final vote – and sending the text to the President – to just a few hours before the deadline: not a great look for the majority.

© Il Manifesto Global