Switzerland says Italy is not taking back asylum seekers under the Dublin agreement

The Swiss government had announced that it would resume the return of asylum seekers to Italy under the Dublin Regulation from the end of August. However, Italy has not yet taken any back, Justice Minister Beat Jans told the media on Friday.

“The situation with Italy remains very difficult when it comes to Dublin transfers,” said Jans. Although Italy had promised to take back Dublin cases, this “has not happened so far”. Italy is breaching Europe’s common rules in this regard.

“We do, after all, have a bilateral readmission agreement with Italy. We can return irregular migrants from Italy at the rate of 15 a day. “Italy is complying with this agreement,” Jans continued. Dialogue with Italy is continuing, “step by step”.

The State Secretary for Migration, Vincenzo Mascioli, also described the situation on Friday as “unsatisfactory”. He expects Italy to resume readmissions under the new EU pact. In October, the EU is also due to publish an initial interim report, which will address cooperation between member states.

Switzerland had assumed Italy would cooperate

The Swiss government had announced plans to resume repatriations to Italy in mid-August – initially, these were to be limited to individual cases. At the time, the State Secretariat for Migration (SEM) assumed that Italy “would play its part”, an SEM spokesperson said.

Shortly after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni took office, Italy halted all readmissions of asylum seekers in December 2022. Most recently, Meloni defended her approach to migration, despite the growing number of European countries wishing to return so-called secondary migrants to Italy. The new EU Asylum and Migration Pact (GEAS) represents a “positive turning point” for her country, the right-wing head of government wrote on social media. She emphasised that Italy could even benefit from the rules that came into force in June.

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Alongside Switzerland, Germany and Austria, as well as Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands, also intend to return asylum seekers to Italy who entered the EU via that country and subsequently travelled on to other European countries. The background to this is the Dublin Regulation: under this, every migrant must apply for asylum in the EU country they first entered.

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Translated from German, reviewed by an English Department journalist.