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The Schengen Committee is convened on Thursday 13 August at 2.30 pm in the room on the third floor of Palazzo San Macuto for the hearing of Minister Matteo Piantedosi on the restoration of border controls between Italy and Spain.
The tension regarding the migrant case is therefore not easing. «The new Pact on migration and asylum must be implemented, the returns of the ‘Dublinarians’ must be operational». After Italy and Spain, here is Germany. The Ceuta crisis seems to have reopened Pandora’s box on a dossier, immigration, which for a few months in Europe had appeared to be “dormant”. The effects are now unpredictable.
And for Italy the match becomes significantly more complicated, with the risk of a ripple even in the axis between Giorgia Meloni and Friedrich Merz, among the strongest in Europe. Yes, because in the new Pact on Migration which came into force on June 12th there is not only talk of external borders and hubs in third countries. The issue of secondary movements, a traditional point of friction between Italy and second arrival countries, such as Germany, Austria and France, is regulated more rigorously. “There is no Dubliner to be taken back from Berlin,” sources from the Interior Ministry concluded in the evening. “The functioning of the Dublin system is an essential condition for the success of the Common European Asylum System”, and Berlin “expects that, starting from that date, transfers to Italy and Greece will be carried out again”, explained a spokesperson for the German Interior Ministry, confirming Repubblica’s anticipation. Germany’s initiative follows two tracks.
The scenario also in view of the next electoral appointments
The first is purely political. In Brussels they are watching with increasing attention the moves of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in view of September 6, when there will be voting in Saxony-Anhalt, the German state where the far right of the AfD is firmly in the lead. That will be the first electoral appointment of an autumn – and this is one of the major fears that is circulating in Palazzo Berlaymont – which risks being dominated by the electoral campaigns in the main member countries: Italy, Spain, France and Poland. In all, there will be a vote in 2027. There is, however, also a normative pre-condition in Berlin’s move and in this context that the clash with Rome could take place. According to Germany, the ‘amnesty’ on secondary movements resulting from the bilateral agreement of the autumn of 2025 came to an end with the grounding, last June, of the new Pact on Migration. Italy, on the other hand, “considers all the alleged ‘Dublinants’ who arrived in Europe before 12 June 2026, the date of entry into force of the new Migration Pact to be zero. Furthermore, it is still premature to imagine that there are people who, having arrived in Italy after that date, are currently in other countries” since “little time has yet passed to be able to ascertain this”, is the thesis leaked by the Interior Ministry which also underlines another point: for those who arrived after 12 June they will have to trigger compensation with the migrants brought to Italy by NGOs, many of which are German.
What is certain is that in an evaluation last July 15th the Commission noted that Rome, since the entry into force of the Migration Pact on June 12th, had not yet implemented the rules on the return of ‘Dublinants’, i.e. migrants who, once landed in Italy, had moved towards another EU member country. “During the first weeks of application of the EU regulation on the management of asylum and migration (Ammr), i.e. between 12 June and 7 July, 8 member states communicated to the Commission information relating to the submission of requests to take migrants into custody: 12 transfers were requested from Italy but the latter rejected them”, explained the Commission in the document. With a note: «A receiving Member State cannot refuse a transfer and must propose an alternative date» to do so. Only in one case could the country in question exempt itself: by taking charge of asylum applications directed to another member state, thus alleviating the latter’s possible emergency. In the same document, the Commission expressed a significantly more positive assessment for Greece and Spain, two other countries involved in secondary movements. In short, the chess game on migration risks getting complicated for the prime minister. «Meloni breaks European solidarity to pursue Vannacci’s propaganda. Consequence: the Spanish also close Schengen and the Germans send back migrants who had already left Italy. Why hurt ourselves?”, was Matteo Renzi’s attack. «Meloni’s decision disintegrates the EU and hurts Italy», added Riccardo Magi of + Europa. The EU, after the mediation attempt implemented yesterday between Rome and Madrid, will return to express its opinion on the migration dossier in the next few days. Perhaps waiting for August 15, the date indicated by the Italian government as a possible end to Schengen controls for those arriving from Spain. But attention in Brussels remains high. Facing a very hot autumn, with a Europe that unexpectedly frayed in the summer, is the last thing Ursula von der Leyen would want.