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Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s governing coalition is facing fierce criticism from Italy’s legal community over a new proposal to pay immigration lawyers a €615 bonus for every irregular immigrant that they can persuade to leave the country.
The so-called repatriation bonus — approved by the Senate on Friday — was a late amendment to a sweeping security bill due to be approved in the lower house of parliament this week.
Other controversial elements in the proposed law include a provision for authorities to hold people in 12-hour “preventive detention” ahead of protest marches if they are deemed dangerous, and an initial “shield” for police officers accused of committing violent acts in the course of carrying out their duties.
But it is the plan to pay immigration lawyers — provided to migrants free by the state under a system of legal aid — only if they persuade irregular migrants to leave the country “voluntarily” that has provoked a fierce outcry among Italy’s legal and judicial community.
“This provision is incompatible with the Constitution and with the most elementary principles of legal ethics,” the Union of Defence Lawyers said in a weekend statement. “The lawyer cannot be paid to obtain the outcome desired by the State, but must assist their client with full freedom and independence.”
The scheme, it said, “betrays the idea of a subservient legal provision”, and “transforms the defender into an instrument of the government’s remigration policies”.
Dario Belluccio, a member of the Association for Legal Studies on Immigration, a group of immigration lawyers, called the proposal “dangerous”. He said it was unfair, as lawyers who provide legal aid free to migrants would only be paid “if repatriation actually occurs”.
“A lawyer’s activity must be free, independent and autonomous, aimed exclusively at protecting the individual,” Belluccio told the FT. “In this case, that freedom and independence are undermined because the lawyer is pressured to achieve a certain result and only that result.”
The National Association of Magistrates said that paying a lawyer to achieve a pre-determined outcome would “jeopardise the effectiveness of judicial protection” for asylum seekers and others tied up in complex immigration cases.
A separate provision of the security decree will also make it tougher for foreign migrants to access free legal assistance to challenge an Italian government expulsion order, a step also condemned by the legal community.
The proposed amendment — which was put forward by a group of lawmakers from Meloni’s rightwing Brothers of Italy party and its coalition partners, the League and Forza Italia — is the latest clash between Meloni’s government and the Italian judiciary, particularly over migration issues.
It comes just weeks after Italian voters rejected the government’s proposed constitutional amendments that would overhaul the organisation of the judicial system.
Meloni, who came to power vowing to stem the inflow of irregular migrants into Italy, has previously lashed out at judges, who rejected her plan to detain irregular migrants at offshore centres in Albania.
But opposition politicians have also been fiercely critical of what some have dubbed “the remigration bonus”, and are demanding that it be struck from the draft security bill ahead of this week’s impending vote.
The debate comes as far-right groups have been gathering signatures in favour of the introduction of a law on remigration in parliament, which would pave the way for larger-scale deportation of foreign migrants living in Italy.
So far this year, just 7,300 irregular foreign migrants have arrived in Italy by boat, down from 12,124 in the same period last year, and 16,090 in the same period in 2024.
Critics say the sharp drop-off stems in part from the EU’s closer co-operation with security forces in Libya and Tunisia, where authorities are intercepting boats and detaining migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean.
