Meloni v. Judges: In Italy, a Fight Over Migration Rekindles Old Hostilities
Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, had scored a coup.She pushed through a tough anti-migration plan that would force some asylum seekers headed for Italy instead into a detention center in Albania while their claims are heard.
At a time when anti-immigration sentiments are rising in Europe, the program caught the eyes of other European leaders who viewed it as a potential blueprint.Then, within days of the first migrants arriving in a newly built detention center in a former Albanian military base, an Italian court upended Ms.Meloni’s plans.The judges this month demanded that the migrants be sent to Italy, saying their detention would violate a European court ruling.
The decision set off a public row between the judiciary and the government that is falling along familiar battle lines, in which conservative officials accuse judges of having an activist, and often liberal, bent.Ms.Meloni, a conservative, denounced the ruling, and her supporters pointed to a leaked email from a judge that they said showed a political bias.
The email to the judge’s colleagues suggested Ms.Meloni was more of a “danger” than the conservative former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, whose feuds with the judiciary engulfed Italy’s political life for decades.Ms.
Meloni later posted excerpts from the email on social media.Then, on Friday, Italy’s popular weekly magazine L’Espresso splashed a drawing of Ms.
Meloni and a red-robed judge fencing on its cover.“It’s a longstanding and unresolved conflict” between the government and the judiciary, said Serena Sileoni, a professor of constitutional law at Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a s...