The victory of the right-wing coalition at the general elections of September 2022 brought the topic of migration back to the center of the Italian political debate. In the first half of the year the Parliament had discussed migration issues with a theretofore unknown positive attitude: the shock caused by Russia’s aggression against Ukraine nourished the sympathy for those displaced by the war and led to the welcoming of tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees and the financing of support initiatives. However, the steady rise in the number of migrants reaching the country’s shores, as compared to those arrived in the period immediately after the conclusion of the 2017 agreement between Italy and Libya, led the newly elected President of the Council of Ministers, Ms. Giorgia Meloni, and her center-right coalition to adopt a tighter approach.
Already in her inaugural speech, delivered on 25 October 2022 before the Chamber of Deputies (3rd Meeting, XIX Legislature) and later addressed also to the Senate of the Republic, Ms. Meloni set her cabinet’s priorities in the field of migration:
This Government wants to walk a path thus far little trodden: to stop illegal departures, finally ending human trafficking in the Mediterranean. Our aim is unchanged, but if you do not want to speak of naval blockade, I will put it this way: our intention is to resume the original proposal of the European Union’s naval mission Sophia, which in its third phase, planned but never implemented, provided for the blocking of departures of boats from North Africa. We intend to propose this at the European level and implement it in agreement with the authorities of North Africa, creating in African States hotspots managed by international organizations, where asylum requests can be assessed in order to distinguish who has the right to enter Europe from those who do not have such right […].
Just a few weeks later, the same idea was expressed by the Minister of the Interior, Mr. Matteo Piantedosi. On 16 November, before the Chamber of Deputies (10th Meeting, XIX Legislature) and the Senate (8th Meeting, XIX Legislature), he spoke of the “need to govern migratory flows and to stop illegal departures”. He added that a “general plan to foster the development of North Africa” should be “made conditional on a greater cooperation in the prevention of departures and the realization of repatriations”, actions which would also be repaid with the creation of avenues for legal entry in Europe. The Minister reiterated the same concept on 7 December when answering a parliamentary question raised by a member of the Chamber of Deputies (21st Meeting, XIX Legislature). He stated that
the Decreto Flussi [i.e., the decree aimed at governing migratory flows, ed.], appropriately designed in terms of rewards, can become an important tool for granting countries most involved in the fight against irregular immigration greater access quotas, while at the same time strengthening legal entry channels […].
The Government’s intention to block departures from the coasts of Africa is premised on the idea, which is made explicit in all the speeches quoted above, that such departures can be illegal, and that migration can be irregular since its place of origin. This might be in conflict with human rights law, and in particular with Article 12(2) of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, according to which “[e]veryone shall be free to leave any country, including his own”.[1] This is also the exact phrasing of Article 2(2) of the 1963 Protocol No. 4 to the European Convention on Human Rights.[2] Both provisions are modelled after Article 13(2) of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In general, except for some mainly procedural requirements in the country of origin, the illegal character of migration is to be assessed with reference to the laws of the country of destination. It can be argued that countries of origin cannot be sensibly required to assess whether people leaving their territory are entitled, on any ground, to enter the country of destination. This is so because among such entitlements is persecution suffered in the State one is willing to leave, as well as because such an assessment of a migrant’s right to be admitted in the country of destination is a complex legal matter also involving that country’s domestic law – thus, a matter third countries are hardly able to decide. If the country of origin is a coastal State – Italy’s main concern being migration by sea[3] – one might also wonder if and to which extent it can command migrants to disclose their destination, depriving them of the possibility of keeping this sensitive information confidential; not to speak of the fact that migrants might be forced to set a new destination because of the (possibly illegal) closing of the ports by the country initially chosen.
These reasons make it difficult to accept, at least in the context of migration by sea via non-scheduled means of transportation, the way Article 2(2) of Protocol No. 4 has been interpreted by the European Court of Human Rights, according to which an interference with the right to leave takes place “where an applicant is prevented from travelling to any country of his or her choice to which he or she may be admitted”.[4] This focus on the entitlement to enter the country of destination led the Court to rule that measures aimed at preventing illegal entry are outside the scope of Article 2(2). Thus, such provision was said by the Court to be inapplicable to the naval blockade set up jointly by Italy and Albania at the end of the 1990s, since it had the purpose of preventing the applicants from illegally entering Italy rather than leaving Albania.[5] At any rate, even if Article 2(2) were applicable, it is doubtful that Italy could be held responsible for the violation of the right to leave merely for concluding agreements with North African countries whereby the latter enforce policies curbing this right.
Unsurprisingly, the incumbent Government has stressed the existence of the right not to leave. In the final days of 2022, the Minister of the Interior, interviewed by an Italian newspaper, said that “we must invest on countries of origin and transit with development policies apt to guarantee the right not to emigrate to have a better life”.[6] Some weeks earlier, before the Senate (17th Meeting of 13 December 2022, XIX Legislature), the President of the Council of Ministers had expressed the same concept, advocating for a cooperative approach capable of establishing “the conditions to defend the right not to have to emigrate, rather than the right to have to emigrate [sic] that has been maintained so far”. Later and in the same place (50th Meeting of 21 March 2023, XIX Legislature), Ms. Meloni reiterated the idea: “I want to state once more that, before any hypothetical right to emigrate, every human being has the right not to be compelled to emigrate in search for a better life”. In her view, compliance with this right – it is worth stressing the consistent use of such word, as if it were seen as a true legal entitlement – would require the deployment of resources to prevent “illegal departures” and to create “concrete alternatives to migration”. If, currently, the existence of a similar right in international law can be doubted, these declarations might contribute to the opinio juris of a new custom.
In the same speech of 21 March, Ms. Meloni, commenting on recent developments at the European level, reported about the European Union’s plan of involving the flag States of ships in search and rescue (SAR) operations. According to the Prime Minister, “flag States, that finance non-governmental organizations [NGOs], must take on the responsibility they have under the law of the sea”. This is a recurring theme in the political discourse of Italy’s conservative parties, one that in the last years has been voiced over and over again.[7] The increased inflow of migrants in late 2022 provided another occasion for a carousel of statements by the members of the Government. In particular, the Minister of the Interior was asked to inform the Parliament – which he did during the abovementioned meetings of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of 16 November – about a series of SAR operations carried out in Maltese and Libyan waters with no coordination by any country. Nonetheless, Italy, together with other States, was contacted by the NGOs running the ships to allow for the disembarkation of the rescuees on its soil. In the case of the Humanity 1, flying a German flag, “the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, with a note verbale addressed to the Federal Republic of Germany, […] urg[ed] the flag State to take all necessary actions to identify a place of safety for the migrants, exercising its powers over ships”. Then the Minister added:
On 2 November, I brought to the attention of our Minister of Foreign Affairs the need to keep the dialogue with Germany open, so as to urge the exercise of [that country’s] jurisdiction over the ship and to acquire information about the people on board. On the same date, the German embassy, denying any responsibility of the flag State, requested our Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide prompt support for disembarking in an Italian port the people on board the NGO’s ship, invoking respect for the relevant international conventions. […]. On the evening of 4 November, following the entry of the Humanity 1 into national territorial waters, […] I imposed a prohibition on staying in national territorial waters beyond the time necessary to ensure rescue and assistance operations for those people in emergency and precarious health conditions reported by national authorities. […] I emphasize that the adoption of the aforementioned decree did not impose an absolute ban on entry, but interdicted the stay in territorial waters beyond the time necessary to allow to take charge of the vulnerable people on board.
As for the Geo Barents, flying a Norwegian flag,
On 29 October, the Farnesina […] urg[ed] Norway to take all necessary actions to identify a place of safety for the migrants. On 3 November, the Norwegian embassy declined any responsibility of the flag State, invoking instead that of the State responsible for the SAR area, i.e., Malta, and, subordinately, that of neighboring coastal States. Again, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a further note verbale to the Norwegian embassy with the same requests made to Germany for the Humanity 1.
The very same procedure was then followed, in a consistent manner, in the case of the Ocean Viking, flying a Norwegian flag. On a more general level, Mr. Piantedosi stated:
For sure, existing international conventions do not establish a priori what should be the place of safety, nor that it should coincide – as is sometimes hastily said – with the nearest port, so that Italy should take care of all migrants who are brought into our territorial waters by perfectly functioning and well-equipped private naval assets with no problems in terms of safety of navigation. […] Although it is indisputable that the rescue operation is over only when the survivors’ safety is no longer at risk and their basic needs are met, and that international regulations do not consider the intervening ship, per se, as a place of safety, the guidelines of the International Maritime Organization state that ships may be considered as temporary safe places if they are able to accommodate survivors safely. I stress this not only because many NGO ships fit this description, but above all because, pursuant to UNCLOS [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea] and the European Convention on Human Rights, flag States are responsible both for the protection of the fundamental rights of rescued persons and for the identification of an appropriate place of safety. These are the legal bases of the discussions held with the German and Norwegian authorities, who were required to exercise their responsibilities for coordinating SAR operations carried out by ships flying their flags, by giving them the necessary instructions.[8] So, flag States should have worked in close coordination with the shipmasters, conducting all preliminary assessments of the situation on board and activating only thereafter, and in the absence of other solutions, the mechanisms of international cooperation. Therefore, in the circumstances that have involved the NGO ships in question, the choice of the place of safety should have been made first by the States responsible for the SAR area in which the events occurred, that is, Malta and Libya, in cooperation with the flag States of the ships, or, in the absence of coordination at least on the part of Malta, by the flag States in cooperation with the neighboring coastal States. Consequently, the request for a place of safety in Italian territory should have been sent to the Italian authorities by the flag States of the NGO ships, and not by the NGOs themselves, as it happened. Despite this, Italy has adopted a course of action inspired by the will to safeguard human life, intervening even in situations that exceeded its obligations under maritime and European law. And here is where the behavior of NGO ships becomes relevant […]. It is evident that, if NGOs systematically act in an autonomous way, the ability of the SAR area State to direct and successfully conduct the rescue operation is undermined. If then – as happened in the cases in question – NGO ships head for the ports of a State other than the one responsible for coordination in the SAR area, without observing the relevant procedures and in violation of the immigration laws of the coastal State, the transit of such ships can be legitimately considered as a non-innocent passage, precisely in accordance with the oft-cited Article 19 UNCLOS.
In the final words of this quotation the assumption seems to be implicit that immigration laws can be breached even before the landing of the rescuees, that is, before the migrants’ entitlement to enter the country (e.g., due to a refugee status) can be assessed by national authorities. This point is not clear, though. In particular, Italy has yet to take a definite stance on the scope of the right to be disembarked in a given country and its relationship with the right to be lawfully admitted to that country.
Mr. Piantedosi said that Italy’s actions inspired by the intention to protect human life often went beyond what is prescribed by international law. Since he also stated that the duty to select a place of safety primarily (albeit non exclusively) rests upon the flag State of the rescuing ship and the State responsible for the SAR area where the operation was conducted, one could wonder whether, in case such States agreed on disembarkation in a port far from the actual location of the ship, Italy’s Government would deem it lawful to preclude access to Italy’s territory to a ship requesting it because of humanitarian reasons. A question that can be read in light of the Government’s recent practice of assigning NGO ships ports in central or even northern Italy, irrespective of both the rescuees’ conditions and the difficulty of the travel to get there, and thus in disregard of any safety considerations.[9]
Moreover, even when the rescuees are allowed to land on Italian soil on humanitarian grounds (e.g., young age or health reasons), it is not clear whether the Italian Government thinks that they are entitled to lodge an asylum claim. A few days after his speech before the two houses of the Parliament of 16 November, the Minister of the Interior commented the decisions taken during a meeting of the Council of Ministers:
We will take care only of humanitarian needs, children and pregnant women: the Humanity 1 will be allowed to stay at anchor off Catania but, at the end of the vetting, people who do not meet the requirements will have to go back to international waters. […] [This is] the first action not to deflect [sic] the duties of the NGO ships’ flag States, [since the Humanity 1] forced its entry into Italy’s territorial waters without complying with our requests, that is, who are the people on board, where were they rescued and which were their objective conditions.[10]
Supposedly, the requirements Mr. Piantedosi referred to are those that, if met, would allow the rescuees to stay in Italy, such as the criteria to obtain refugee status. Doubts may be raised, however, based on an inference and some open statements. As for the former, it can be noticed that, as affirmed by the Minister of the Interior on 16 November 2022, the information the Ministry of Foreign Affairs requested, through notes verbales, from the embassies of the flag States also included whether some of the rescuees had filed applications for international protection. Also, Decree-Law No. 1 of 2 January 2023, converted into Law No. 15 of 24 February 2023 and amending a previous law that authorizes the Government to bar the entry of NGO ships into Italy’s territorial sea, lists among the conditions to be met to avoid such a ban the “taking of timely initiatives to inform the people on board of the possibility of requesting international protection”. Given that the ships that carry out SAR operations in the Mediterranean Sea usually fly a non-Italian flag, shipmasters enquiring about the presence of asylum seekers – more: soliciting requests for asylum – are probably seen by the Italian Government as foreign public officials acting on behalf of the respective flag States. Thus, rescuees, even if provisionally admitted to Italy, would have to submit applications for international protection to those States.
This was stated openly by some ministers. In an interview, the Minister for Civil Protection and Sea Policies, Mr. Nello Musumeci, said:
Those who are in trouble at sea must always be rescued. But a ship is a piece of the State. And the law requires that State to take care of those whom it rescued. […] [A] ship flying the German flag has the duty to ask the German Government to take charge of those migrants.[11]
The Minister of Justice, Mr. Carlo Nordio, also equated the ship to the flag State’s territory and was even more explicit in splitting the issue of disembarkation from that of asylum seeking:
It follows from international law and the Dublin agreements: if a ship, as it is obliged to do, saves shipwrecked people in international waters, the first access State is that of the flag of the ship. If the ship is German, it is as if the migrants had landed in Hamburg. The commander has the duty to register them, and then take them to the nearest safe port for assistance. But then they have to go to Germany.[12]
The idea that flag States, as alleged countries of first entry in the European Union, are responsible for asylum applications may help explain why, in matters of migration by sea, Italian politics seems to have moved from attempts at involving a number of different countries (such as the State of nationality of the NGO running a rescue ship)[13] to a consistent invocation of the duties of flag States only. This can be seen in the statements by the Government’s ministers[14] and, more officially, in a joint declaration issued in November 2022 by Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus:
Pending agreement on an effective, fair and permanent burden sharing mechanism, we cannot subscribe to the notion that countries of first entry are the only possible European landing spots for illegal immigrants, especially when this happens in an uncoordinated fashion based on the basis of a choice made by private vessels, acting in total autonomy from the competent state authorities.
We reiterate our position that the modus operandi of these private vessels is not in line with the spirit of the international legal framework concerning Search and Rescue Operations, which should be respected.
Every State shall effectively exercise its jurisdiction and control over ships flying its flag.
With full respect to the competences of littoral states in accordance with international law, we consider that a serious discussion on how to better coordinate these operations in the Mediterranean, including by ensuring that all these private vessels respect the relevant international conventions and other applicable rules, and that all Flag States take responsibility in accordance with their international obligations, is urgent and necessary.[15]
As in Mr. Piantedosi’s statement of 16 November, also in this declaration the call for responsibility of flag States is accompanied by criticisms levelled against the behavior of NGOs, which are accused of breaching the law. An allegation later repeated by the same Minister of the Interior: “[t]he modus operandi of the NGOs is outside the scope of the cases envisaged by the international conventions on rescue at sea”.[16] These words were uttered as a reply to the concerns expressed by the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Ms. Dunja Mijatović, in relation to the legality of the abovementioned Decree-Law No. 1. As said, that decree, and then the law it was turned into, set some parameters to be complied with by NGO ships so as not to be prevented access to Italy’s territorial sea. Such criteria include – in addition to the need to inform rescuees of the possibility of lodging applications for international protection, as stated above – the duty to inform both the flag State and the State responsible for the SAR area where the rescue occurred of the ship’s operation and to follow their instructions (if issued in accordance with the relevant international rules), the duty to act in conformity with permits or licenses issued by the flag State and the technical regulations concerning safety of navigation, as well as the duty to ask for a place of safety immediately after the rescue and to reach such a place without delay. This last parameter, in particular, has been criticized by human rights advocates for its evident purpose of avoiding multiple rescues by the same ship and keeping NGOs far from the open sea for as long as possible.
Whereas many scholars and activists see this piece of legislation as a breach of Italy’s international obligations, the Italian Government professed the opposite view. In announcing the imminent adoption of Decree-Law No. 1, the Prime Minister said that her cabinet had approved “a norm concerning the compliance with international law by NGOs”.[17] Later on, before the Chamber of Deputies (48th Meeting of 2 February 2023, XIX Legislature), she elaborated on the same concept:
the decree-law governs the transit and stopover in territorial waters of NGO ships, and sets the conditions under which the activities carried out by ships rescuing people at sea can be deemed to comply with international conventions and national rules on the law of the sea. […]
This decree brings the rescue activities of NGO ships back into the framework of international law. […]
[T]his decree does not conflict with international law, it respects it. It respects the international conventions on the law of the sea, the 1974 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea and the 1982 UNCLOS; it respects the European Convention on Human Rights; it respects the Lisbon Treaty; it respects the Additional Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime aimed at combating the smuggling of migrants; it respects national, European and international rules on the right of asylum; it respects Article 10, third paragraph, of our Constitution. It is not a decree against NGOs, it is a decree that regulates their activities, with regard to rescue operations, safety of navigation, information about the possibility of applying for international protection, information to be provided to national authorities, and the assignment of a port of disembarkation to be reached without delay. On this point, I remind this assembly that the report of the General Command of the Harbour Masters, now in the records of the joint commissions, explains how “Italy has no obligation under international maritime law to meet the demand for a place of safety coming from merchant or NGO ships flying a foreign flag, which regularly carry out rescue activities outside the Italian SAR region and with no coordination by Italy”. No rule, no convention, no treaty prohibits a State from deciding which is the most appropriate place to disembark people rescued at sea in order to better manage first-aid activities – I repeat: no rule – and with this measure Italy regains this sovereign prerogative.
The same insistence on compliance with international law characterizes a short “promotional” video recorded by Ms. Meloni soon after the entry into force of Decree-Law No. 1:
a decree that is primarily concerned with NGOs that has as its goal compliance with international law. Because international law on sea rescue simply does not allow anyone to provide a ferry service in the Mediterranean, or any other sea, and to shuttle people from one nation to another. Of course, we want to respect international law. International law states one thing very clearly: it states that you are obliged to rescue someone if you fortuitously encounter them and if someone is at risk. Here, the rules that the Italian Government is enforcing aim at limiting the rescue of migrants to what is provided for by international law, with some fairly simple rules. First point: if you come across a boat and you rescue people, you have to take them to a place of safety, and so you do not keep them on board while you continue to do multiple rescues until the ship is full, because that is not the same as making people safe and especially it is not the same as making fortuitous rescues of shipwrecked people. Then, we ask for consistency between what the ships are doing and what they are registered for – because obviously these are different activities: merchant ships shuttling to rescue migrants is something that is quite jarring. Also, there needs to be screening of whom is on board, there needs to be clear information about the rescue mechanisms, there needs to be rules to prevent that in picking up these people on board the safety of an approaching vessel is not jeopardized. Stringent rules that allow us to comply with international law. […] What happens if these rules are not respected is that there is no authorization to enter international waters [Ms. Meloni meant “territorial waters”, ed.], and a violation of such authorization results in an administrative detention of the vessel […]. We do this to respect international law, we do this to respect the migrants as well.[18]
This almost obsessive manifestation of opinio juris can contribute to shaping international rules on disputed aspects of migration law. One such issues, touched upon the Prime Minister in her video message, had already been considered by her, even more directly, shortly after her swearing-in ceremony:
The Italian Government is complying with all international conventions, and the prohibition imposed on these NGO ships to stay in Italian waters, beyond the time necessary to ensure rescue and assistance operations for fragile individuals, is justified and legitimate. On board those ships are not shipwrecked people but migrants: people came aboard by transshipping, in international waters, from other naval liaison vessels, and the ship that took charge of them is equipped to host them and provide for all their immediate needs. Legally, therefore, we are not talking about “shipwrecked persons”, a qualification that is valid instead under the SAR regime.[19]
In brief, the Prime Minister seems to have questioned the applicability of the SAR legal framework – and thus, implicitly, of the duty to allow disembarkation – to people who are transferred from the smugglers’ vessel to the rescuers’ vessel. In the absence of further details, however, it is impossible to say whether the Government excludes a priori that, in such a scenario, the lives of the people involved can be considered in peril.
The importance of proper legal qualifications can be raised also in relation to another statement by Ms. Meloni:
We must remember here what the law of the sea, so many times invoked inappropriately, is. If when at sea you come across, by chance, a vessel in danger, you are obliged to save those on board. But if you ferry migrants between the African coasts and Italy, you unequivocally go against the law of the sea and international rules. If then an NGO ship flies, say, a German flag, there are two possibilities: either Germany recognizes it and takes charge of it, or that becomes a pirate ship.[20]
It appears that, despite her premise, Ms. Meloni herself invoked the law of the sea inappropriately. International law does not leave much room for bringing under the concept of “piracy” those vessels whose flag States deny responsibility for people saved in – or even “ferried” across – the Mediterranean Sea. This, however, was not the first time a member of the Italian Government improperly labelled NGO ships as “pirate ships”. Already in 2019, the then Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interiors, Mr. Matteo Salvini, had used that definition with reference to – according to his own reconstruction of facts – a ship that refused to follow the instructions of the State responsible for the SAR area where the rescue had occurred (Malta) and tried to land in Italy,[21] and a ship that pre-empted the rescue by the coast guard of another country (Libya).[22] He had also categorized as “piracy” the hijacking of a merchant ship by migrants unwilling to be brought back to Libya.[23] In all these cases the use of the concept is incongruous, as it is utterly incompatible with the letter of Article 101 UNCLOS.
Paolo Turrini
A quotable version of this post was published in the Italian Yearbook of International Law: Turrini, “Of Castaways and Pirates: Migrants’ Rights from Departure to Arrival”, IYIL XXXII (2022), 2023, pp. 498-510; available here.
[1] On the interpretation of such right by the Human Rights Committee, see Harvey and Barnidge Jr., “Human Rights, Free Movement, and the Right to Leave in International Law”, International Journal of Refugee Law, 2007, p. 1 ff.
[2] The case law of the European Court of Human Rights on the right to leave is illustrated in Council of Europe, “Guide on Article 2 of Protocol No. 4 to the European Convention on Human Rights: Freedom of Movement”, 2022, and Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, “The Right to Leave a Country”, 2013.
[3] On this, see Markard, “The Right to Leave by Sea: Legal Limits on EU Migration Control by Third Countries”, EJIL, 2016, p. 591 ff., esp. pp. 604-605.
[4] Council of Europe, cit. supra note 2, para. 121 (emphasis added).
[5] Ibid., para. 118.
[6] “Piantedosi: ‘I soccorsi in mare garantiti dallo Stato. Le Ong fanno la spola solo con la Tripolitania. Come mai?’”, La Repubblica, 31 December 2022.
[7] As documented in Turrini, “Between a ‘Go Back!’ and a Hard (to Find) Place (of Safety): On the Rules and Standards of Disembarkation of People Rescued at Sea”, IYIL, 2018, p. 29 ff. See also Id., “The Classification of Italy’s Ports as Places Unsafe for Migrants Rescued by Foreign Vessels Outside the Country’s SAR Area”, IYIL, 2020, p. 516 ff.
[8] In fact, SAR operations should be managed by the State in whose SAR area the rescue occurs; further below, in the quotation, flag States and States responsible for SAR areas are correctly distinguished (footnote added).
[9] “Migranti, la prassi di assegnare porti lontani alle ong è legittima?”, Redattore Sociale, 11 January 2023.
[10] “Navi Ong bloccate, Piantedosi: ‘sbarcheremo solo donne incinte e minori’”, Corriere della Sera, 22 November 2022. The Prime Minister added: “[w]e are trying to ensure respect for what, in our view, is international law”.
[11] “Musumeci: ‘La nave batte bandiera tedesca, deve chiedere alla Germania di farsi carico dei migranti’”, Corriere della Sera, 22 November 2022.
[12] “Nordio: ‘Dl anti-rave da perfezionare. Riuscirò a riformare il codice di Mussolini’”, La Repubblica, 5 November 2022.
[13] See Turrini, “Between a ‘Go Back!’”, cit. supra note 7, p. 41.
[14] In addition to those quoted above, see the one by the Vice President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, Mr. Matteo Salvini, who said: “[w]here should a Norwegian ship go? Simply, to Norway…” (Twitter, 3 November 2022). Just a few years before, and a couple of months after he lost his office as Minister of the Interior, he had stated: “[t]he Ocean Viking is a French NGO on a Norwegian ship. […] It must go either to France or to Norway” (Twitter, 15 October 2019; similarly, the day before). See also the answer given by the Minister for Relations with the Parliament, Mr. Luca Ciriani, to a question on the Humanity 1: “if Germany wants to act in international waters then it must take charge of the choices made by the ships flying its flag” (“Migranti, il ministro Ciriani: ‘La Germania non decide per l’Italia, se salva persone in mare se ne faccia carico’”, La Repubblica, 3 November 2022).
[15] The full text of the declaration is available here. Of course, the idea that “countries of first entry are the only possible European landing spots for illegal immigrants” is neither correct nor sensible: writing the sentence the other way round (i.e., that landing spots are considered as the countries of first entry) would have been more reasonable and in line with the thesis that flag States can be countries of first entry too.
[16] “Migranti, il Consiglio d’Europa: ‘L’Italia ritiri il decreto sulle Ong’”, La Repubblica, 2 February 2023.
[17] Prime Minister’s end-of-year press conference, 29 December 2020.
[18] The video, of 3 January 2023, is available here.
[19] “Meloni: sulle navi delle Ong non ci sono naufraghi ma migranti. Bizzarra la scelta di farli sbarcare”, RaiNews, 9 November 2022.
[20] Vespa, La grande tempesta, Roma/Milano, 2022, p. 305. Although the interview was probably given before Ms. Meloni became Prime Minister (but after her victory in the general elections), these words were never retracted.
[21] This was “tweeted” by the Minister.
[22] “La Sea Watch salva altri 53 migranti. Salvini: ‘Nave pirata’”, La Stampa, 25 June 2019.
[23] “108 migranti dirottano un mercantile per non tornare nei lager”, Il Dubbio, 28 March 2019.
Italy's Diplomatic and Parliamentary Practice on International Law 