Italy

Strasbourg acting as the EU Court’s enforcer

26 April 2014 by David Hart KC

Dhahbi v.Italy, ECtHR, 8 April 2014 – read judgment – in French only

A case to get the Sun leader writers confused, in that the Strasbourg Court was making sure that Italy did not get away with refusing to refer a case to the EU Courts. 

Mr Dhahbi lives in Italy.  He was of Tunisian origin, and was not at the time of this case an Italian citizen.  He applied for and was refused a household allowance on the sole ground of nationality. He relied upon an entitlement to this allowance in an association agreement between the EU and Tunisia (known as the Euro-Mediterranean Agreement).  The Italian court refused his application to have the case determined by the CJEU in Luxembourg.

Strasbourg decided that there had been a violation of his fair trial rights under Article 6, and discrimination on grounds of status under Article 14, when read with Article 8.

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Asylum conditions in Italy not severe enough to prevent removal of refugees from the UK

19 October 2012 by Rosalind English

 EM (Eritrea) and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department – read judgment

A member state was entitled to return a refugee to the EU state of first embarkation unless it is proved that there are “systematic deficiencies” in the asylum procedures of the receiving state.

These four cases raised one central question: was it arguable that to return any of the claimants to Italy, either as an asylum-seeker pursuant to the Dublin II Regulation or as a person already granted asylum there, would entail a real risk of inhuman or degrading treatment in violation of Article 3 of the ECHR? In determining that question, the evidence provided by the UN Refugee Agency was decisive for the court.

The Dublin II Regulation provides for a system whereby asylum claims are processed and acted on by the first member-state in which the asylum-seeker arrives. Under this Regulation asylum-seekers and refugees may be returned to that state if they then seek asylum or take refuge elsewhere in the EU. The assumption underlying this system is that every member state will comply with its international obligations under not only the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights but also the Qualification Directive and the EU Charter. 
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The case for letting prisoners vote – Reuven Ziegler

24 May 2012 by Guest Contributor

Last Tuesday saw the latest episode in the prisoner voting legal saga with the European Court of Human Rights’ Grand Chamber’s judgment  reversing the Chamber judgment which found Italy’s automatic ban on voting for prisoners serving over 3 years in prison (and a lifetime ban with the possibility of future relief for those sentenced to more than 5 years) in breach of Article 3 of Protocol 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights.

Adam Wagner has compared  the prisoner voting issue to a ping-pong ball in a wind tunnel, noting that ‘the ball is now back on the UK’s side of the table’. Indeed, the UK must still allow at least some prisoners the vote, as required by the 2005 judgment in Hirst v UK (No.2) and the 2010 judgment in Greens & MT v UK.  Over at EJIL: Talk!, Marko Milanovic rightly accounts for the unholy mix of law and (inter)national politics that has generated the Grand Chamber’s unprincipled judgment. Indeed, as Carl Gardner suggests on the Head of Legal blog all that logically remains of the Hirst judgment is that automatic disenfranchisement of prisoners that are sentenced for less than 3 years (probably) breaches the convention.

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Italy lose in Europe over asylum seeker boat interception – Henry Oliver

26 February 2012 by Henry Oliver

Hirsi Jamaar and Others v. Italy (Application no. 27765/09) – Read judgment

The European Court of Human Rights has held that a group of Somalian and Eritrean nationals who were intercepted by Italian Customs boats and returned to Libya fell within the jurisdiction of Italy for the purposes of Article 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights . The return involved a violation of Article 3 (Anti-torture and inhumane treatment), Article 4 of Protocol 4 (collective expulsion of aliens), and  Article 13 (right to an effective remedy). The patrols that returned migrants to Libya were in breach of the non-refoulement principle.

The applicants were eleven Somalian nationals and thirteen Eritrean nationals who were part of a group of two hundred migrants who left Libya in order to reach the Italian coast. On 6^th May 2009 Italian ships intercepted them 35 miles south of Lampedusa and returned them to Triploi, in Libya. During the voyage the migrants were not told where they were going (they assumed they were being taken to Italy), nor were they identified.

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