Introduction

The bill and then the decree-law that introduced a new "security package" into the Italian legal system were the subject of three communications to the Italian government from various Special Rapporteurs of the UN Human Rights Council between 2023 and 2025, plus a joint statement on the occasion of the sudden transformation of the bill into Decree-Law 48/2025, which came into force on 12 April 2015. The final transformation into law took place on 9 June 2025 (Law 80/2025).

It is a rather exceptional treatment, which is only partly justified by the duration of the process of drafting what later became Decree-Law 48/2025 and the variety of criminal issues it deals with. The attention aroused by this set of rules was due to the particular nature of the reforms contained therein, whose very repressive contents and potential threat to democratic freedoms (which also prompted the intervention of the Italian President of the Republic in moral suasion) particularly concerned international observers. In December 2024, the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe had sent an open letter to the President of the Senate, inviting him to point out to the senators the many inconsistencies that the then bill (ddl.) 1236 presented in light of the European Convention on Human Rights. The bill became a decree-law and then a law, with no substantial changes.

These lines summarise the main criticisms that the UN Special Rapporteurs have highlighted over the years regarding the contents of the "security package", with particular reference, of course, to those that continue to appear relevant after the adoption of Law 80/2025

The Special Rapporteurs and their Communications

The Special Rapporteurs (SRs) are independent experts elected by the United Nations Human Rights Council to carry out study, monitoring and information gathering tasks, including through direct contact with human rights defenders and local NGOs, receiving complaints from victims, conducting field visits and fact-finding activities. The SRs operate individually or in working groups of five members.

Their work results in one or more annual reports submitted to the Council and the UN General Assembly. The reports form the basis for the development and adoption of resolutions by the respective bodies. The SR mandates may relate to specific or cross-cutting human rights issues (e.g. torture, extrajudicial or arbitrary executions, the right to development, freedom of religion and belief, etc.), or individual countries. Established since the early 1980s, in recent years around 50 mandate holders have been active at the same time, about ten of whom have a country mandate, the others on themes.

The Communications of the SRs are letters that the experts can send to governments and other entities (e.g. transnational corporations) through the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. In the case of communications addressed to governments, transmission takes place through diplomatic channels, namely the state's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva.

The Communications may consist of urgent appeals, or report violations of international norms, or draw attention to and request additional information on current issues. In the case of urgent appeals and reports of violations, the Communications remain confidential for a period of two months, to allow the state to resolve the case without publicity; after two months they are still published on a dedicated website of the High Commissioner's Office. If they relate to other matters - for example, concerns about bills or government measures under discussion -, the letters are made public on the same website two days after being sent to the government. Periodically, a collection of such Communications is submitted to the Human Rights Council.

It is up to individual governments reached by such Communications to assess whether and how to respond. The response is transmitted to the High Commissioner through the permanent missions.

The Communication of 19 October 2023 - Occupation of Another's Property

The issues that emerged in the context of the "security package" were first highlighted in October 2023 by two SRs: the one on the Right to Housing as a Component of the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living and Non-discrimination in this Area, and the one on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty. The first is Balakrishnan Rajagopal, a jurist from the University of Chicago; the other is Olivier de Schutter, a professor at Louvain (JOL ITA 5/2023, 23 October 2023).

In this first document, the draft introducing Article 624-bis of the Criminal Code (cp.), subsequently incorporated into the security bill and then transposed into Article 10 of Decree-Law 48/2025, introducing Article 634-bis of the Criminal Code, was commented on. The subject matter is therefore the new crime committed by a person who through violence, artifice or deception takes possession, occupies or defends (…) property destined for the domicile of others.

Some of the critical observations of the October 2023 Communication concerned rules that were fortunately removed from the final version of the decree-law. For example, the current Article 634-bis is limited to criminalizing the arbitrary occupation of a property intended as another's domicile, but the previous version to which the Communication referred considered the occupation of any property belonging to another person or entity. The original bill also provided for the immediate reinstatement of the owner and the immediate arrest of the occupant, as well as the suspension without exception of water, electricity, gas, etc. supplies to the occupied dwellings. These provisions have at least partially lapsed. However, even in the current text, some of the criticisms raised in 2023 remain relevant.

First of all, the SRs lament the legislator's inability to discriminate between the different situations that lead to the occupation of other people's homes.

To use the words of the SRs, The proposed law “would apply … both to private and public properties. It would include persons staying in rented housing after a rental agreement has ended, persons in situations of homelessness who have no access to adequate housing and are living in abandoned properties … [The norm] seems to fail to distinguish between irregular occupation caused by a state of necessity (resulting from the corresponding failure of the State to provide access to everyone present in its territory to adequate housing that is affordable, habitable and provides safety, privacy and protection from the elements of nature), on the one hand, and illegal occupation of property, land and housing occupied by organized criminal groups, on the other hand”.

In addition to the claim of unreasonableness, another sore point is the severity of the criminal penalty.

Imprisonment from two to seven years appears disproportionate and incompatible with the right to personal liberty. According to international parameters on freedom and personal security (e.g. Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by Italy and entered into force in 1978) the law providing for restrictions on liberty must respect criteria of necessity, proportionality and reasonableness, and these do not appear evident in the case of the rule in question.

The provision on the crime of arbitrary occupation of property contrasts in a particularly stark way with the commitment that states have made to avoid criminalizing the status of homelessness.

In the opinion of the SRs, the rule not only remains silent on the state's obligation to guarantee access to housing, a component of the right to a dignified standard of living affirmed by Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (also entered into force for Italy in 1978), but seems to envisage prison as the state's response to people who cannot afford adequate housing.

In short, the communication stigmatises the failure to take into account, in the context of the bill, the socio-economic vulnerability that may characterise people who illegally occupy other people's dwellings.

It is true that the occasion and target of the Communication were some amendments to the bill that provided, among other things, for the extension of criminal protection to any real estate property, including those not intended for housing, changes not present in Decree-Law 48/2025. However, in light of the law now in force, it is difficult not to agree with the SRs in observing that overall the law is not designed to provide a social and public policy response to the housing problem in Italy, and rather constitutes a step backwards on the front of protecting the right to housing for the most socially disadvantaged subjects. While it is true that the right to housing is conceived by the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights as a “progressive realization" right, it is also true that the same Covenant considers it a violation of international obligations for the state party to deliberately adopt retrogressive measures, in the absence of rigorously founded justifications. The decree-law and the explanatory report introducing it do not seem to acknowledge a particular need to carry out this crackdown, nor indeed do they elaborate on the necessity and urgency of the measure.

Finally, the SRs attack the provisions relating to the reinstatement of the owner in the occupied property and the eviction, including forced eviction, of the occupant.

The current Article 10, second paragraph, of Decree-Law 48/2025 and Law 80/2025, provides for an accelerated eviction procedure limited to situations in which the occupied house is "the only actual domicile of the complainant" (the hypothesis is therefore more specific than the case in which the irregularly occupied property is "intended for housing", as provided for in the first paragraph of Article 10 of Decree-Law 48/2025 and Article 634-bis of the Criminal Code). In this case, once the police have found "sound reasons to believe the occupation was arbitrary", they can force the occupant to vacate the property by availing themselves of an authorisation from the public prosecutor that is not prior but concurrent, since it can be given orally or electronically in writing. Only in the following 48 hours must the eviction report be transmitted to the public prosecutor, who may request its validation from the judge within the next 48 hours (as provided for in the new Article 321-bis of the Code of Criminal Procedure (cpp.) introduced by Decree-Law 48/2025).

The compression of the procedural guarantees that must preside over operations that affect the right to housing is harshly criticised by the SRs. In particular, General Comment No. 7 (1997) of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (established by the homonymous Covenant with the task of monitoring state parties' compliance) is recalled. The General Comment, with regard to evictions, requires that they be genuinely negotiated, communicated in advance and, above all, that they provide for the preparation of the irregular occupant for alternative housing to the one they occupy without title. All of this - and in particular the prior identification of adequate alternative housing solutions - was not provided for in the original bill and is not present even in Decree-Law 48/2025 or Law 80/2025.

These remarks on procedural guarantees are even more significant in light of a subsequent Communication addressed to the Italian government by the SR on the right to housing together with the SRs on human rights and extreme poverty, on the rights of persons with disabilities, on the independence of judges and lawyers, and the Independent Expert on the Rights of Older Persons (JOL ITA 2/2025, February 27, 2025). This latest Communication comments with particular concern and severity on a document dated 25 May 2025 adopted by the General attorny at the Council of Ministers and forwarded to the judicial authority in which the government instructed “the judiciary to dismiss, as non-binding, interim measures issued by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) requesting to suspend evictions against individuals who filed individual complaints under the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (OP-ICESCR)”. Presumably based on this document, in at least six cases of forced evictions that resulted in communications to the CESCR, the applicants witnessed the request for suspension issued by the CESCR being rejected by the competent Italian court. All this in the face of a post-pandemic situation that sees at least 18 families on the waiting list for the assignment of a social housing house in the city of Rome alone. The Communication summarises some cases relating to Italy and submitted to the CESCR by Italian and non-Italian citizens, including very elderly people, families with minor children, and persons with disabilities, who would have been denied the request for suspension of eviction on the basis of the disputed instruction document. The SRs reiterate that nothing authorised the State Attorney's Office, as an organ of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, to propose an interpretation of the Optional Protocol that seems to deny the obligation of the State Party to cooperate in good faith with the Committee in the handling of individual cases. By instructing the national courts not to implement the interim measures requested by the Committee, the governing authority not only failed to cooperate with the international body, but also provided the domestic courts with an interpretation of international law that renders the proceedings to which the State itself had agreed to submit to be ineffective, and this cannot fall within the the national margin of discretion rule.

In 2023, the SRs recommended that the lawmakers avoid the unintended consequence of punishing the poor and homeless for being homeless and poor. Some particularly odious aspects of the original bill were eliminated in the current Article 10 of Decree-Law 48/2025 (and therefore do not appear in Articles 634-bis of the Criminal Code and 321-bis of the Code of Criminal Procedure), but the impression remains that the legislator (or rather the government) intended to exploit the rightful indignation at some occupation episodes that affected "fragile" owners (in particular elderly people with only one domicile) to justify a crackdown on equally fragile individuals and families, according to a pattern that evokes a perverse taste for fomenting war among the poor.

The Italian government's response to the SRs' requests for information consisted of a twenty-line statement which, with the exception of the courtesy formulas, was limited to recalling the existence of the National Fund for Support for Access to Rental Housing and the Tenants in Delinquientt Housing Fund, which was not funded at the time (it would be by the 2025 budget law, after several years of suspension).

Communication of 20 January 2025 - Again on the Crime of Arbitrary Occupation of Property

In January 2025, the same two SRs returned to the subject with Communication JOL ITA 1/2025, commenting on what had in the meantime become Article 10 of Bill 1236. The new Communication, therefore, refers to a text that is completely overlapping with the one currently in force after the adoption of Decree-Law 48/2025 and its conversion into law.

The SRs acknowledge some changes that have taken place, but reiterate that the rule in question ends up criminalising particularly vulnerable people and families, namely:

“- persons who occupy a property out of necessity without housing title (squatters); 

- persons who fail to comply with an enforceable eviction order because they are unable to pay rent or to pay mortgage, or after the expiration of a lease; 

- persons who are unable to demonstrate a valid contract, including tenants with a verbal contract, persons who occupy a dwelling based on unauthorized subletting or in exchange for services, persons housed without a contract or victims of a false lease; 

- persons experiencing homelessness who resort to living in abandoned properties;

- persons residing in camps and informal settlements [which constitute appurtenances of residential properties].”

The concern reiterated by the SRs is that this rule punishes the poor and does not make any progress in the field of the housing emergency in Italy, being rather functional to facilitate the execution of the 150,000 evictions and 170,000 foreclosures that have accumulated over time.

In addition to the observations already made previously, the SRs add some further critical points.

The first concerns homelessness. The condition of the homeless continues to spread and worsen in Italy and elsewhere. The criminalisation of such status represents a further violation of their rights. In fact, with the new rule, in addition to the right to housing and an adequate standard of living, their personal freedom and security are also affected, given the risk of extremely severe criminal sanctions to which they are exposed.

This condition of double vulnerability can also result in inhuman and degrading treatments, contrary to Article 16 of the Convention against Torture (CAT). This would therefore represent a third violation of their dignity as human beings.

The use of new incriminating rules to regulate conduct already substantially punished by other criminal provisions is also criticised. There are already, of course, rules in national law that punish personal violence, injury or threats; and the criminal code already provided for the illegal occupation of land or buildings belonging to others as a crime (and in 2022 the controversial offense of occupying land to hold rave parties was added: Article 633-bis). The new rule, therefore, appears redundant.

With regard to the provisions that make eviction operations more expeditious, it is reiterated that "it would not be acceptable for forced evictions to be carried out if there is no legal guarantee that those affected have access to housing that meets basic adequacy standards and is affordable".

The SRs made some suggestions to the national legislator (unfortunately made futile by the government's choice to transform the bill into a decree-law). The SRs wondered whether, before adopting the new legislative instrument, the state could assess the impact of the rule on the most vulnerable individuals and families: persons experiencing homelessness, people in extreme poverty, migrants, or members of the Roma minority; collect data to understand the extent to which people subject to eviction have access to alternative adequate housing; concurrently with the criminal law, take measures to prevent evictions caused by the inability to cover housing costs or, more generally, to allow people living in poverty in Italy to access rental housing or some other suitable contract to guarantee stability and legal security or tenure.

The Italian government's response came on 24 March 2025. On the specific issues relating to the content of the then Bill 1236, the government entrenches itself behind the autonomy of Parliament (in reality, a few days later, the parliamentary debate would be abruptly interrupted with the enactment of the decree-law). The rest of the response contains references to the fundamental principles of the Constitution and the inviolable rights recognised therein (perhaps a way to remind that there is no explicit recognition of the right to housing among them?). The recent refinancing for 2025 and 2026 of the fund for delinquent housing is mentioned (with an allocation that is lower even in nominal terms, let alone real terms, than that of 2015-16), the adoption of the "save the house" decree (for the regularization of building irregularities, here also intended as a measure that could increase the availability of housing), the "Housing First" measures and other inclusion provisions contained in the EU-financed Recovery and Resilience Facility (PNRR), and the “inclusion allowance” replacing the “citizenship income” finstrument.

Communication of 19 December 2024 - An Overall Criticism of the Security Package

The third Communication to the Italian government from the UN SRs (JOL ITA 7/2024) is dated 19 December 2024 and is signed by a group of SRs whose respective mandates are significant to recall: Gina Romero, SR on the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association; Irene Khan, SR on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression; Mary Lawlor, SR on the situation of human rights defenders; Gehad Madi, SR on the human rights of migrants; K.P. Ashwini, SR on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; and Ben Saul, SR on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism.

The subject of the communication was Bill 1660, i.e. the version of the security package approved by the Chamber in September 2024.

The critical observations focus first on the counter-terrorism provisions. The new Article 270-quinquies-3 of the Criminal Code (which punishes the conduct of procuring and possessing instructions on the preparation and use of weapons, chemical substances or techniques and methods of violence and sabotage "for the purposes of terrorism"), appears too imprecise, as does the new provision added to Article 435 of the Criminal Code, which punishes the distribution, dissemination and advertising of materials such as dynamite, explosives and other materials or techniques used to carry out attacks or sabotage. The penalties range from 2 to 6 years ' imprisonment and from six months to 4 years' imprisonment, respectively. The SRs fear that these provisions may have a disproportionate impact on freedom of opinion and expression and on the freedom of the press, since the link between possessing or disseminating instructions on the use of weapons and methods of violence and sabotage and the purposes of terrorism or the commission of crimes such as railway disaster, attack on the safety of transport or shipwreck does not appear sufficiently detailed. The criminal provisions may have a chilling effect on social actions and forms of struggle that are not of a terrorist nature or aimed at committing the aforementioned crimes.

Related to this issue is also the observation that the SRs make regarding Article 7 of the bill, now Article 9, Decree-Law 48 and Law 80/2025, which amends Article 10-bis of the Citizenship Law. Conviction for serious crimes, including terrorism-related offences, may result in the loss of Italian citizenship even if the perpetrator does not hold a second citizenship but "may acquire it". This rule opens the way to a potential multiplication of cases of statelessness.

A series of comments concerned Article 10 of the new law which, as we have seen above, was vehemently contested also by the SRs on the right to housing and extreme poverty, as well as Articles 12 (damage on the occasion of demonstrations with violence and threat to the person), 13 (amendments to the 2017 "security decree" and Article 165 of the Criminal Code on the prohibition of access to transport infrastructures) and 14 (the very controversial rule on "road blocking" which transforms into a crime the administrative offence of impeding free circulation on the road with one's body). These provisions are seen as potentially in conflict with the freedom of peaceful assembly. The Human Rights Committee (which monitors the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights) stated in its General Comment 37 of 2020 that "Article 21 of the Covenant protects peaceful assemblies wherever they take place […]. Such assemblies may take many forms, including demonstrations, protests, meetings, processions, rallies, sit-ins, candlelit vigils and flash mobs. They are protected under article 21 whether they are stationary, such as pickets, or mobile, such as processions or marches […]. The freedom of assembly also includes acts of civil disobedience carried out by one or more persons and it is specified that, in the context of a demonstration, "violence" means the use by participants of physical force likely to cause injury or death to others or serious damage to the property of others, while mere pushing and shoving or disruption of vehicular or pedestrian movement or daily activities do not constitute "violence".

It follows that the rules that allow for absolute restrictions on peacefully demonstrating near transport infrastructures potentially conflict with Article 21 of the Covenant. It does not escape the SRs' notice that many of these provisions are in fact aimed at striking demonstrations promoted by human rights defenders and environmental activists. The right of the former to peaceful assembly is specifically protected by the 1998 Declaration on Human Rights Defenders; that of the latter is based, among other things, on the Aarhus Convention, which protects the right to freedom of information and participation in environmental decision-making.

Even Chapter III of Decree-Law 48 - Law 80/2025 does not escape the critical scrutiny of the SRs. The increase in the penalty for crimes of violence, threat or resistance against a public official or the crime of injury, if committed against a law enforcement officer, linked to the circumstance of taking place near transport or energy infrastructures, is considered a further element aimed at curtailing the freedom to demonstrate. These provisions in fact reverse the rule whereby free demonstrations must be presumed peaceful. The fact that demonstrators are subjected to violence by external agents or by participants in counter-demonstrations, or that violent actions are carried out by agent provocateurs, does not negate the intrinsically peaceful character of the demonstration itself.

Similarly, the SRs are concerned about the rule that allows the police to wear video cameras during public order maintenance operations, territorial control, and surveillance of stations and sensitive sites. These are measures that extend the possibilities of digital surveillance of demonstrators, on which the state's attention must be maximum, in order to avoid an excessive reduction of the spaces of freedom of assembly and expression for citizens.

Finally, particular concern is raised by the provisions of Article 26 of Decree-Law 48 - Law 80/2025, which introduces the crime of riot within a prison (Article 415-bis of the Criminal Code), including juvenile and female institutions, namely the norm that specifically punishes even forms of passive resistance; as well as those of Article 27, which provide for similar provisions for riots in migrant detention centres. Such measures, in addition to being generally disproportionate with respect to the right of assembly of detainees, as well as of their right to free opinion and expression, specifically affect groups that are already experiencing a situation of vulnerability.