Council of Europe: sixth ECRI's report on Italy

The new report of the Council of Europe's European Commission against Racism and Intolerance [1] (ECRI) published on 22 October 2024, contains a total of 15 recommendations addressed to the Italian authorities for the improvement of the fight against racism and discrimination. In particular, ECRI calls on Italy to establish, in consultation with civil society organisations, a fully independent equality body, while strengthening the National Office against Racial Discrimination (UNAR) as a government body coordinating anti-racism policies. In addition, the authorities should adopt a national action plan against racism, organise an awareness campaign aimed at promoting equality, diversity and intercultural and interreligious dialogue, and take more effective actions to combat hate speech.

However, in the light of the previous report (2016), ECRI acknowledges progress in several areas, such as the system for collecting data on bullying in schools, including on grounds of ethnicity and sexual orientation, and online courses for teachers to prevent and combat this phenomenon; the recognition of homosexual civil unions; the adoption of the national LGBT+ strategy and health care for transgender patients; and finally, a system of financial support for centres against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, including shelters for victims of violence against LGBTI persons.

Despite the progress made, some issues remain a cause for concern. For example, as already in previous reports, it is reiterated that the legal status and the role, albeit of primary importance in the fight against racism and intolerance, of UNAR as an office of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, remain incompatible with the fundamental requirement of independence of an equal opportunities body.

According to ECRI, LGBTI people continue to suffer prejudice and discrimination in their daily lives, and the procedure for the legal recognition of change of gender continues to be complicated, lengthy and excessively medicalized.

However, it is above all the increasingly xenophobic and highly divisive and antagonistic public utterances of certain political representatives that raise concern, particularly when they are directed against refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, as well as Italian citizens with a migrant background, the Roma community and LGBTI people. According to ECRI, this climate certainly does not facilitate the path towards the full integration and inclusion of migrants and other vulnerable groups. The work of individual judges dealing with migration cases is also the target of repeated, excessive and harsh criticism by certain political representatives, putting the efficiency and independence of the judiciary at risk.

Finally, it is the work of the Italian police to raise criticism. ECRI regrets that little or nothing has been done in recent years to ensure greater accountability in cases of racist or LGBTI-phobic abuse committed by State Police officers, Carabinieri and other law enforcement officers. ECRI therefore calls on the authorities to promptly set up a working group involving UNAR, public officials from relevant services and institutions, prosecutors and civil society representatives in order to explore ways and means to develop effective accountability mechanisms in cases of racist and LGBTI-phobic police abuse, also through the establishment of an independent body to monitor the work of the police.

In addition, the report states that during its visit to Italy, ECRI received many testimonies of racial profiling* by law enforcement agencies in police stops’ operations, especially on the Roma community and people of African descent. ECRI has therefore recommended to the Italian authorities an independent study that should aim "to identify and address any practice of racial profiling by law enforcement". ECRI will already assess in two years' time whether this recommendation has been followed.