From the Bossi-Fini Law till the Minniti Package (2002–2017)

The second Berlusconi Government aimed to make the provisions on immigration stricter and in 2002 approved the Bossi-Fini Law (Law no. 189, 30 July 2002) which introduced more restrictive measures and limits both on entry and on legal stay. It reintroduced as an absolute requirement the need for third country nationals to have a job contract prior to immigration otherwise they could not get a visa. It also added a residence contract (contratto di soggiorno) to the residence permit (permesso di soggiorno). This contract should be signed by an employer and the immigrant worker. The contract must provide also accommodation and the payment of travel expenses for the worker to be able to return to his/her home country.

Furthermore, it reduced the time allowed to search for a new job from 12 to 6 months in case of dismissal and it cancelled the possibility to get a temporary visa to search for work.

The new stricter regulations on visas proposed to contribute to select new entrants basically in relation to the needs of the Italian productive system.

The Bossi-Fini Law increased patrols of Italy’s coastlines. The law determined that suspected illegal immigrants were to be taken to specific centres under police control. The law limited to 60 days the period to identify the suspected immigrants; if the authorities reveal their illegal status, they are deported and accompanied to Italy’s borders. Deportations became immediate and not suspendable even if the immigrant appeals to the court. If illegal immigrants return to Italy, they will be arrested and tried by court.

The Bossi-Fini Law also limited the family reunifications to spouses and children under 18. It required non-EU citizens to be fingerprinted in order to remain in Italy and

created a “one-stop shop” or sportello for immigration which handled applications for family reunifications.

According to the new measure, the long-term residence cards were issued after 6 years instead of the previously applied 5-year term. It created local commissions to evaluate asylum applications rapidly, it established holding centres for asylum seekers, and it formalised the assisted voluntary returns.

And finally, it established the National Office for the Promotion of Equal Treatment and Removal of Racial and Ethnic Discriminations.⁴

In the next years, Italy had to face not only the growing number of sea arrivals but the increasing number of EU citizens who arrived to the country after the EU-enlargement of 2004 and 2007, which created a further pressure both on the society and on politics. For these reasons, the second Prodi Government approved urgent measures in 2007 for the expulsion and removal of immigrants for terrorism and public security reasons (Decree Law no. 249, 29 December 2007) and proposed a significant immigration reform in Parliament. The draft bill would have changed the existing quota system introducing three year term forecasts and ensuring greater involvement of social partners, it would have established candidate lists at foreign consulates, created sponsored job-search visas, given longer permit durations and easier renewal procedures. Summarising the draft bill measures, it would have rendered easier both the entry and the stay in Italy for foreign workers. Due to the government crisis in early 2008, there was no real chance to approve the draft bill.

In these years the number of foreigners living legally in Italy increased significantly due to the EU-enlargements, the number of Romanians was 95,000 in 2002 while in 2009 it was already 950,000. The same tendency might be observed in case of Polish people, their number was only 30,000 in 2002, while in 2009 there were more than 107,000 Polish citizens in the country.

Due to the growing social tensions, conflicts and increasing number of criminal acts, the second Berlusconi Government approved the so-called Maroni Package (Pacchetto Sicurezza). This very rigid security package had two parts, the first was approved in 2008, the second in 2009.

The first part introduced a sanction of imprisonment from six months to three years and confiscation of the apartment of those who rent it to clandestine immigrants. It aggravated the consequences for employers who employ irregular foreigners (imprisonment from six months to three years and a fine of 5,000 Euros for each employed worker). Furthermore, in 2008 a legislative decree (Legislative Decree no. 160, 3 October 2008) restricted the right to family reunification.

The second part of the Maroni Package declared illegal entry and stay a crime punished with a fine reaching from 5,000 to 10,000 Euros. It made possible to keep illegal immigrants up to 180 days (previously 60 days) in the so-called Identification and Expulsion Centres (Centri di identificazione ed espulsione, CIE) in order to discover their identity and prepare subsequent repatriation. It extended from six months to two years the necessary period before applying for citizenship due to marriage and restricted further the conditions for family reunification as it introduced the obligatory verification that housing conditions

4 The establishment of this Office was in compliance with the requirement for harmonisation of community legislation. See Council Directive 2000/43/EC of 29 June 2000.

meet sanitary requirements. And it increased the list of the necessary requirements to get a long-term residence permit introducing a language test to obtain the permit.

In the following years, the third and the fourth Berlusconi governments continued the restrictions on immigration measures approving several decrees and laws on the issue.

In 2011, the government issued six-month residence permits for humanitarian reasons to migrants landed since the beginning of the year, granting them free circulation within the European Union countries. It ensured temporary permits for migration due to the Arab Spring (Prime Minister Decree, 5 April 2011). The government also extended the maximum duration of detention of undocumented foreigners awaiting deportation from six months to 18 months in the CIEs (Law no. 129, 2 August 2011).

Another measure stipulated that non-EU foreigners who intend to request permission to stay longer than one year must sign an Integration Agreement with the Italian State (Presidential Decree no. 179, 10 March 2012).

In 2012 they simplified the seasonal work programme introducing a default acceptance of employers’ requests for those seasonal workers who met certain conditions and who had returned home at the expiration of their permit previously (Law no. 35, 4 April 2012).

After the exceptional year of the Arab Spring, due to the stricter measures introduced by the fourth Berlusconi Government in 2012, the number of the sea arrivals was reduced significantly. From 2013 and 2014, due to the Libyan civil war the number of sea arrivals was appreciably increased; in 2012 only 13,267 sea arrivals were registered while in 2013–2014, the Italian authorities registered in total 213,000 arrivals (ISMU 2016). Not only the total number of the sea arrivals increased in this period but also the number of irregular immigrants, as the ISMU estimated their total number in Italy to 404,000 while in the precedent year their number was only about 350,000 (ISMU 2016.)

In that period of time, the instable Letta Government did not approve any modifications to the existing regulations. In the first year of the Renzi Government, despite the high arrival numbers, the parliament did not approve any reforms. In 2015 and 2016, the always higher and higher pressure on the country was grown as in these two years more than 330,000 immigrants arrived to the Italian coastline (see the table below).

Table 1.

Statistical data regarding immigration between 2014 and 2016

Year Immigrants Irregular immigrants Repatriation

2014 170,100 31,000 16,000

2015 153,842 34,107 3,688

2016 181,283 38,284 5,066

Source: Compiled by the author based on the data of Cruscotto statistico giornaliero of the Ministry of the Interior

As the table shows, the number of irregular immigrants has an increasing tendency while the number of realised repatriations are low. All these confirm the slow and not properly functioning asylum procedures and the slow and inefficient repatriation procedures.

The Renzi Government had two more significant attempts to reform the regulation in force of migration, the first was the new draft bill on citizenship presented to the Chamber of Deputies in 2015 (Draft Bill no. 3264, 2015), but it was not approved by the Senate. The other attempt was the presentation of the Migration Compact in June 2016 at the EU Summit by Matteo Renzi. The proposal identified and mapped the key partner countries, determined all the possible offers of the EU to these countries, such as investment projects, EU–Africa bonds, cooperation on security, legal migration opportunities and resettlement schemes. It also proposed to establish a new financial instrument for the external action in the field of migration and the emission of an EU–Africa bond.

After the little success of the Renzi Government on reforming the regulatory aspects and system of the Italian immigration policies, the new Paolo Gentiloni Government and especially its Minister of the Interior, Marco Minniti started a real and solid reform procedure since the first day of the government, already at the very end of 2016.

The so-called Minniti Package (Law Decree no. 13, 17 February 2017, Law Decree no. 14, 20 February 2017) was approved at the beginning of the year 2017. It was a complex reform regarding the measures on entries, voluntary returns and repatriations, asylum procedures and integration and it followed the principle of zero tolerance.

It introduced tough line on forced returns, it established bilateral agreements also with Sudan, Niger and Nigeria. It extended the administrative detention system as it determined to open a residence and repatriation centre (CPR) in every region, and it decided on the enlargement of the existing ones with an overall capacity of 1,600 per centre. Previously, they were called detention centres and there were 13 in 2011 with a capacity of almost 2,000 places but by January 2016, only four were truly operational with an effective capacity of less than 400 places (ISMU 2017, 33–38).

It speeded up the asylum procedures by simplifying judicial procedures as it cancelled the second instance, and by specialising sections in courts dedicated to asylum claims and deportations, which are made up of judges with a deep knowledge of the phenomenon of migration. It introduced the system of public utility and community service type works for refugees to avoid the “empty wait” phenomenon and its possible negative consequences. It established investments in integrated reception and voluntary returns. It also established several integration programmes and procedures and the government presented the draft bill on citizenship to the Senate (Atto Senato no. 2092 della XVII Legislatura).

Besides the above mentioned law decrees, the Parliament also approved the Zampa Law (Law no. 47, 7 April 2017) concerning unaccompanied foreign minors, which made a series of changes to existing laws with a view to improving protection (D’Odorico and Di Pascale 2017). It ensures that unaccompanied foreign minors enjoy “equal treatment”

with Italian minors.

Evaluating the Minniti Package, we can observe that it was the most efficient reform on migration policies till 2017 (see the table below). Its success was caused not only by the complexity of measurements presented by the government and approved by the parliament but also the fact that Marco Minniti dedicated a lot of time and energy to establish bilateral agreements with the concerned African countries, he realised numerous Africa tours and doing so he became the most approved and trustworthy European politician on the African continent.

Table 2.

Statistical data regarding immigration between 2016 and 2017

Year Immigrants Irregular immigrants Repatriation

2016 181,436 38,284 5,066

2017 119,310 20,675⁵ 21,555

Source: Compiled by the author based on the data of Cruscotto statistico giornaliero of the Ministry of the Interior and the data of the State Police