Italy: Interior ministry ordered to pay damages to asylum seeker over eviction

A Rome court has ruled that the Italian interior ministry has to pay €18,200 in damages to a Pakistani national. He had tried to apply for asylum in Italy, but was pushed back to Slovenia and subsequently to Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina in October 2020.

A court in Rome has ordered the interior ministry to pay €18,200 in damages to a Pakistani asylum seeker who was detained and then evicted in October 2020 from Italy to Slovenia, and subsequently to Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina. Two organizations involved in the case, the Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI) and RiVolti ai Balcani, recently made the May 9 court decision public in two press releases on the topic.

The network RiVolti ai Balcani (which is composed of more than 30 Italian associations, banded together to try and examine and “break the silence” on what is going on in the Balkans, states their website) said that the court had recognized the degrading conditions endured by the Pakistani applicant especially in Bosnia.

Italy not allowed to send asylum seekers back immediately

RiVolti argued that the ruling reaffirmed the illegality of the readmission procedures implemented at Italy’s eastern border on the basis of an agreement between Italy and Slovenia signed in 1996, which was never ratified by the Italian parliament.

Under the Dublin regulation, asylum seekers can be sent back to the EU country where they were first registered. (Italy, Slovenia and Croatia are all members of the EU.) However, advocates for the rights of asylum seekers have emphasized that before anyone is sent back across a border, their asylum case has to be registered and authorities have to check whether they have actually requested asylum in other countries.

Court ruled in favor of asylum seekers before
A Rome court already ruled in January 2021 that readmissions to Slovenia were against the law and the Italian government suspended the procedure. The year before that, more than 1,200 people were sent back to Slovenia.

However, since taking power in autumn 2022, the government of prime minister Giorgia Meloni has tried to restart readmissions to Slovenia, according to reports from various organizations focused on migrant and refugee rights.

“Meloni actually announced at the end of 2022 that [they] wanted to reactivate readmissions, which were suspended in 2021 after a previous decision taken by Rome’s tribunal: this ruling dismantles such intentions and unveils an obscure side to Italy’s actions because it is not possible to ignore the rule of law”, RiVolti ai Balcani commented in their press release.