Migrants, Meloni separates Schengen from the EU Pact as countries ready for returns rise to five

The chapter on Dublin transfers to Italy moved on two tracks during the day: the count of member states willing to return asylum seekers and, above all, the government’s political response to the opposition’s criticism.

The new development. On August 21 Giorgia Meloni published a reply on Facebook to criticism from the Partito Democratico over the handling of migration flows, addressed to Elly Schlein. The subject is substantive and concerns two dossiers that the government asks not to be conflated: “Schengen and the Migration and Asylum Pact are two completely different things,” the President of the Council writes. According to her account, the new European Pact represents a positive turning point for Italy precisely on the so-called “Dublin cases,” that is, the asylum seekers whom other member states can return to the country of first entry. The reply was picked up by the Italpress agency on Bologna 2000.

The other half of the story is the suspension of the application of Schengen for third-country nationals arriving from Spain, ordered by the Italian government and justified by security risks linked to the situation in Ceuta: the measure is described in the note from the Presidency of the Council. This is the measure that the executive keeps separate from the asylum chapter.

How many countries there are. According to the August 21 press review published by Sky TG24, the number of European states ready to send back to Italy asylum seekers who landed on Italian shores rises to five; among them are Sweden and Finland. La Stampa, in the same review, indicates a different position from France and Spain on transfers. A further element comes from the newspaper Domani, cited in the Musicletter review: since the new European rules took effect, a reception center in Bulgaria has taken on a central role in the network of facilities envisaged by the Pact.

A necessary caveat: the figure of “five” comes from press reviews, not from an official Italian or European document. We do not have, in the material available, the complete list of countries or the count of transfers actually carried out. It is a press figure, and should be read as such.

Why the distinction claimed by the government is not merely lexical. The two matters operate under different regimes: Schengen concerns controls at internal borders and their temporary suspension, while the Migration and Asylum Pact concerns who is responsible for examining an asylum application and under what conditions a person can be transferred from one state to another. The government today finds itself at both tables and in two opposite positions: it suspends incoming controls from Spain while receiving asylum seekers sent back from the north. Palazzo Chigi’s claim is that the second movement is the price of a framework that, overall, benefits Italy.

The missing figure. To assess the claim one would need figures that none of today’s sources provide: how many transfers to Italy have been requested, how many accepted, how many carried out since the new rules took effect, and how many applications Italy has in turn sent back to other states. The sources available to the newsroom contain none of these numbers: they stop at the count of countries — five — and at the political clash between majority and opposition.