Giorgia Meloni has identified a new archenemy.
Italy’s prime minister has turned her fire on the country’s judiciary, even as her critics decry “dangerous” political attacks reminiscent of Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán.
While the Italian leader, at the head of Rome’s most right-wing government since Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime, has gained international credibility with her moderate rhetoric and support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, at home she has pursued a harsher agenda, moving to tighten her grip on the country’s institutions.
From journalists and intellectuals who scrutinize her actions, to judges who rule against her policies, Meloni routinely lashes out at opponents, portraying herself as the victim in a broader government campaign against dissent.
“This government has transformed critics — those who disagree or even simply those who apply existing laws — into dissidents,” Roberto Saviano, a famous anti-mafia crusader, told POLITICO.
On Monday, a Rome court ordered that seven Egyptian and Bangladeshi asylum-seekers held in a migration center in Albania must be taken back to Italy, challenging for the second time Meloni’s flagship deal with Tirana to crack down on undocumented migration.
On Oct. 18, the Rome court ruled against the detentions of other migrants from Bangladesh and Egypt in Albania, a decision which the Italian prime minister blasted as “prejudicial.”
“It is very difficult to work and try to give answers to this nation when you face opposition from part of those institutions that should help to give answers,” Meloni said referring to the court’s decision.
In a country where the majority of people distrust the judiciary, Meloni’s tough rhetoric could actually prove to be a canny political strategy — despite an avalanche of criticism from the Italian establishment.
Furious judges
Following Meloni’s objection, Deputy Prosecutor of the Court of Cassation, Italy’s top court, Marco Patarnello sent an email to judicial colleagues in which he described her attacks as “dangerous” and asked the legal profession to remain united.
Parts of the email were later published by the right-wing newspaper Il Tempo and posted by Meloni on her social media as, in her view, “proof” that part of Italy’s judiciary is plotting against her.
Judges were apoplectic.
“The email was stolen from a closed circuit. They extracted three sentences and hid the rest of the text which was saying contrasting things to the narrative they intended to create, so that they could fool citizens into thinking that there is a politicized judiciary that wants to overthrow the government,” said Stefano Musolino, prosecutor and national secretary of the Democratic Judiciary, a left-leaning association of magistrates which aims to protect the judiciary’s autonomy.
“This is not the case at all, there is a judiciary that wants to protect rights and wants to do so in an autonomous and independent manner,” he added.
Meloni, he said, was not so much criticizing the court’s decision but the court itself for not meeting her expectations.
“In our view, this is a dangerous vision of the relationship between the institutions. Because if Meloni imagines a judiciary that collaborates with the government it means that she imagines a judiciary that is no longer autonomous and independent, but a judiciary that serves the objectives that the government sets for itself,” he said.
The Italian Ministry of Justice and Meloni’s Cabinet did not respond to POLITICO’s repeated requests for comment over a period of three weeks.
Climate of intimidation
A report on racism and intolerance by the Council of Europe, a top human rights body, published on Oct. 22 warned against “excessive criticism of individual judges dealing with migration cases,” which it said “puts their independence at risk.”
Silvia Albano, president of Democratic Judiciary and one of the judges who ruled against detaining migrants in Albania, had filed a complaint to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Rome on Oct. 24 after receiving death threats.
Similarly, prosecutor Giorgia Righi, involved in a case against far-right Italian Transport Minister Matteo Salvini over a decision in August 2019 to stop a migrant boat from docking in Lampedusa, was placed under police protection last month due to death threats. Law enforcement is already looking after the other two prosecutors involved in the trial.
Musolino said the threats amounted to “intimidation” of judges and added that he completely agrees with the Council of Europe’s concerns.
“Every judge who deals with migration today, or who will deal with it tomorrow, will practically ask himself whether it is convenient for him to continue to be an autonomous independent European judge or whether it is better to keep quiet and do as the government wants,” he said.
According to Italian journalist Saviano, who has lived under police protection himself for 18 years over his revelatory work on Naples’ Camorra mafia, Meloni is tactically consistent in targeting those who criticize her.
“These attacks outline a strategy,” he said. “The methods and objectives are the same, the only differences depend on the role of the people who from time to time must be hit, discredited, frightened and silenced.”
Saviano, a longtime critic of Meloni’s government, was fined for defamation in October 2023 after referring to the prime minister and Salvini as “bastards” over their migration policies.
“The message is that anyone who dares to control or even just contain the government’s action — either because it is their institutional role that requires it, or because as a simple citizen they believe that criticism of power is the salt of democracy — must know that, if they persevere, they will have a hard time,” he said. “Especially if they are right.”
More ‘insidious’ than Berlusconi
In his cautionary letter to colleagues, Patarnello compared Meloni unfavorably to late Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, himself a frequent critic of the judiciary, describing her attacks on judges as “more dangerous and insidious.”
Berlusconi, who died in June 2023, was known in Italy and across the world for lurid sex scandals and his involvement in multiple fraud and corruption trials.
Throughout his lengthy political career, Berlusconi repeatedly attacked Italy’s judiciary, accusing magistrates and judges of being left-wing and plotting against him.
But his attacks, Musolino said, were not aimed at weakening the judicial system’s independence.
“Berlusconi had a more functional focus in protecting himself in the trials that concerned him. His proposals were never aimed at reforming or calling into question the rule of law as we know it,” he said.
According to Francesco Galietti, founder of political consultancy Policy Sonar, Meloni sees the clash with the judiciary as a political opportunity.
“Meloni knows that the judiciary is one of the least popular categories in the country,” he said, after a poll published in late September shows that 54 percent of Italians said they had little trust in the judicial system.
“Meloni’s perspective is somehow innovative, in an atrocious way,” he said. “She wants this clash because that’s what she needed.”
An ideological and political aim has gripped Meloni, critics say.
“Meloni’s model is Orbán’s,” said Saviano. “Meloni’s idea of the state is authoritarian, even if in a democratic context: Its objective is to overrule all the authorities who have to control the government, not only on a criminal level.
“From this point of view, Europe’s responsibilities are enormous: It’s the European Commission that has made Orbán’s power and influence grow beyond measure,” he added.
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