CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES, XVII LEGISLATURE, 478th MEETING, 9 SEPTEMBER 2015.

On 9 September 2015, during a question time at the Italian Chamber of Deputies, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Mr Paolo Gentiloni Silveri, expressed the position of the Government on the initiatives aimed at suspending the Dublin III Regulation. The interrogating Member of Parliament had asked if and when the Italian Government will formally propose the suspension or the overcoming of the Dublin Regulation in order to establish a European Right of Asylum. The Minister stated:

I agree […] on the need to overcome, to go beyond the current rules on the right to asylum in Europe. The reasons thereof are very simple. First of all, because those are rules of 25 years ago, a quarter of a century, and the phenomenon that we are facing, the phenomenon of migration, is surely not comparable to the situation of 25 years ago. In the second place, the everyday news and stories tell us that the pillar on which the regulation of Dublin is built, namely the fact that it is up to the country of first entry to make charge of the situation, is no longer sustainable. How is it possible to imagine that a country like Greece could bear the 400 thousand migrants who will arrive by the end of 2015? It is thus necessary to go beyond the Dublin rules and this position, which until some months ago was an isolated one, is now supported by several Governments and is even included in the preamble of the proposal that the European Commission has described this morning at the European Parliament. Nevertheless, with the same frankness, I would like to say […] that the Government does not fully agree, not on the idea but on the feasibility of a unilateral suspension of the Dublin regulation. The reason is very simple: you can do it in extremely urgent situations for some days – 15 days ago Germany, too, did it, although in a different manner – but the idea to unilaterally get out of the Dublin scheme, for a country as important as Italy, would mean de facto to undermine the whole system that we call the Schengen system, namely the one granting freedom of movement in Europe. We need to be brave enough to go beyond these old rules together.

The full text of the statement (in Italian) can be downloded here.