EU country pays lawyers £500 to send migrants back | World | News
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Government are paying lawyers to send migrants home (Image: Getty)
Italy is attempting to stem the tide of migrants with a new scheme that offers lawyers money to convince their clients to return home. Giorgia Meloni’s government has had a new security bill approved by the Senate, and it will be debated by the lower house of the Italian parliament this week.
Under the new legislation, it’s reported that lawyers could get bonuses of €615 (£535) for each migrant whom they persuade to agree to “voluntary repatriation”. Prime Minister Meloni is understood to have set aside €2460,000 (£213,000) for the scheme this year, with funding expected to double in 2027 and then again in 2028.
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Migrants in Italy after being rescued from a vessel in the Mediterranean (Image: Getty)
The law also aims to remove access to state-funded legal aid for migrants seeking to challenge deportation orders, according to the Telegraph
The newspaper reports that Meloni’s political opponents and some in the legal profession have poured scorn on the new initiative, with Riccardo Magi, an MP from the centre-left More Europe party, calling it a “Wild West bounty”. He added: “We are one step away from ICE.”
ICE, immigration and Customs Enforcement, are the US federal agency used to carry out deportations under Donald Trump‘s administration.
Italy’s national bar council, Consiglio Nazionale Forense (CNF), claimed it was not aware of the new legislation and the Associazione Nazionale Magistrati, a body representing judges and magistrates, said it would oppose the bill on the basis of the effect it might have on migrants’ rights.
Migrants being rescued off the Italian coast (Image: Getty)
Prime Minister Meloni has also faced a legal challenge over an entirely different migration issue. Two US families went to Italy’s highest court last week to challenge the scope of a year-old law passed by Meloni’s government limiting citizenship claims to Italian descendants removed by more than two generations.
Their lawyer, Marco Mellone, argued before the Cassation Court that the law should apply only to people born after it took effect, potentially opening a pathway to citizenship for millions of people living in the United States and parts of Latin America. Another lawyer represented Italian descendants from Venezuela.
A decision by an expanded panel, which makes the ruling binding in lower courts, is expected in the coming weeks.
A decree by the conservative government in March 2025 put the brakes on previous rules allowing anyone who could prove ancestry after Italy’s formation in 1861 to seek citizenship. Italy’s constitutional court last month ruled the new law is valid, but Mellone said the supreme court has the power to clarify the scope of the law.
“The families involved in this case are simply descendants … from an Italian ancestor who emigrated in the late 19th century to the United States, like millions of other people, of other Italians,’’ Mellone said before the hearing. “Today they are invoking their right to Italian citizenship.”
Mellone’s case would clarify the citizenship rights of the descendants of some 14 million Italians who emigrated between 1877 and 1914, according to Foreign Ministry statistics, and beyond.
