The magistrate: “Europe redefines safe countries for migrants. Holding them back is more difficult now.”

From his section of the court of Palermo the cases of migrants held in the center that the Interior Ministry hastily opened a few months ago in Porto Empedocle have passed. And it is one of the first districts in which the ruling of European Court of Justice which redefines the criteria for identifying a country as safe has been applied. «Before – explains President Francesco Micela – Palermo proceeded with a case-by-case examination, following the community principles according to which detention can only be arranged in exceptional circumstances and when other alternative measures would be useless. Now one of the general conditions that legitimizes detention at the border for the sake of security has disappeared Tunisiaas for many countries.”

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edited by the National Chronicle editorial team

October 12, 2024

In detail, what does the sentence provide?

«While in the past States could also designate as safe countries in which there were exceptions for some areas of the territory or categories of people, starting from the last directive of 2013 it is possible to define a territory as safe only if it is so in a “general and uniform”. Furthermore, it obliges judges to verify whether in this regard there has been a violation of community rules in their own legal system.”

Has it already been applied in Palermo?

«We have observed that for Tunisia, included in the list of safe countries, the same country sheet indicates that this is not the case for a category of people: for consensual homosexual relations there is a penalty of three years in prison».

Will detentions become more difficult?

«For the judges, this ruling is not just a precedent, it is formally binding because the European Court of Justice has the task of ensuring compliance with community law. In the decision we took, no room for discretion was exercised, we did not take the place of the government in judging whether or not Tunisia is a safe country, we only verified, as the Court requires of us, whether there had been a violation of the community rules”.