Second night of clashes in Milan, Meloni calls security summit

For the second consecutive night, Milan was the scene of clashes and looting. Between Saturday and Sunday the unrest concentrated around piazza Duomo, via Torino and piazza Castello, with shops stormed and windows smashed. According to a report by ANSA, picked up by a press review from Today.it, more than 200 people were detained, 80% of them minors.

The government’s reaction was swift. Premier Giorgia Meloni convened a security meeting after the second consecutive night of unrest in the Lombard capital. At the centre of the discussion, according to the same sources, was the adoption of new regulatory tools modelled on the Caivano decree, designed for those who exploit street demonstrations to sow chaos rather than exercise the right to protest.

On the front of concrete proposals, the first to move was Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who indicated two directions: restrictions on citizenship for those responsible for serious offences during demonstrations, and a security deposit to be paid by the organisers of marches. These are, for now, political proposals rather than an already defined regulatory text: the government still has to translate them into a concrete measure, and the timing of any decree has not been disclosed.

The most significant figure, from a public standpoint, concerns the age breakdown of those detained. Four out of five detainees are minors, an element that poses the government a question distinct from that of public order in the strict sense: what tools exist, or need to be created, to intervene on a population largely not subject to prosecution through the same mechanisms provided for adults. It is on this point that the reference to the Caivano decree comes in, a measure previously enacted precisely to address situations of juvenile delinquency in contexts of urban unrest.

It remains to be seen what concrete form the measures under consideration will take. The reference to an already existing model — the Caivano decree — suggests that the government intends to operate on regulatory ground already tested rather than build an entirely new tool. Salvini’s proposals on security deposits and restrictions on citizenship for those responsible for serious offences, if translated into law, would instead require a more complex parliamentary passage, since they are measures touching on sensitive individual rights.

Meanwhile, the premier’s calling of the summit signals that the issue has risen to the top of the government’s agenda after two consecutive nights of unrest in the same city. At the moment, neither the date of the summit nor the full list of participants beyond the generic reference to the relevant ministers has been disclosed. The picture therefore remains open: on one hand, a tally of more than 200 detainees with a clear prevalence of minors; on the other, a package of measures still at the stage of political evaluation, not regulatory definition.