On Friday, December 20th, the Palermo civil court delivered the landmark ruling in Italy’s Deputy PM Matteo Salvini’s (Lega/PfE) highly politicized “Open Arms” case, in which the Lega leader was facing up to six years in prison for blocking an NGO ship from disembarking illegal migrants in Lampedusa in 2019.
After long hours of deliberations, the Sicilian court found Salvini innocent of all charges, a verdict that was celebrated across Italy and Europe’s right-wing circles. Had Salvini been found guilty of essentially protecting the country’s borders with a clear democratic mandate behind its back, it would have created a devastating precedent across the EU and further emboldened leftist judiciaries to act against elected representatives.
“Acquitted for stopping mass immigration and defending my country,” the deputy PM posted on X after leaving the courtroom. “Lega wins, common sense wins, Italy wins,” he added.
“Salvini acted in the legitimate interest of our country and in full compliance with his institutional responsibilities,” Luca Zaia, the President of Veneto region said, being among the first domestic politicians to react to the news. “This sentence confirms that Minister Salvini acted with rigor and a sense of responsibility in a delicate situation, highlighting the groundlessness of the accusations against him,” he added.
Congratulations started pouring in from Salvini’s European allies as well, especially from members of the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group where his party, Lega sits.
“Victory,” wrote National Rally (RN) leader Jordan Bardella, the president of the Patriots group. “By preventing migrant boats chartered by activist NGOs from docking in Italy, Matteo Salvini did his duty: to defend his country’s identity, to protect its borders and its people.”
Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán was even quicker to celebrate, tweeting his congratulations within minutes of the verdict being announced. “Justice has prevailed! Bravo, Matteo Salvini,” Orbán wrote. “Another victory for the Patriots!”
Of course, the most important message came from Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, who supported his coalition partner throughout the trial also because a ‘guilty’ verdict would have seriously endangered her popular anti-migration policies.
“Defending the Italian borders can never be a crime,” Meloni wrote. “Let’s continue together, with tenacity and determination, to fight illegal immigration and human trafficking, and defend national sovereignty.”
Throughout the trial, Salvini was confident he’d win and denied any wrongdoing, stating that he would do everything he did for his country again.
“I have kept my promises, fighting mass immigration and reducing departures, landings, and deaths at sea,” he said before entering the court. “Whatever the verdict, today is a good day for me because I am proud to have defended my country.”
As interior minister at the time, Salvini tried to prevent an NGO ship belonging to the Spanish charity Open Arms from disembarking 147 migrants in Italy after picking them up just off the Libyan coasts.
Italian authorities checked the well-being of the migrants and took over eighty of them who needed any kind of medical aid to reception centers, leaving less than half of the passengers on board.
The NGO, however, argued that it couldn’t risk remaining on the sea for three more days until it reached Spain due to the remaining migrants needing immediate care, which led to the ship being stranded offshore for nearly three weeks until court magistrates seized it and ordered the evacuation of the migrants.
Despite Salvini acting entirely within his rights, he was subsequently charged with kidnapping and endangering human lives. The legal battle has been mostly seen as a deliberately provoked political witch hunt that was triggered by the leftist judiciary in response to Rome taking a strong stance on illegal migration and human trafficking, in which NGOs are often complicit.
“It’s clear that the well-being of the migrants was secondary, and the first objective was to destabilize Italy” after Salvini promised not to let illegal migrants land, Lega (PfE) MEP Paolo Borchia said back in September at the Patriot group’s emergency press conference in response to the prosecution’s unprecedented request.
Likewise, Salvini’s defense lawyer argued in court that there was no automatic right for any NGO search and rescue vessel to dock in Italy without authorities’ consent and that Open Arms could have easily taken the migrants to any other EU country instead of staying in Italy for weeks if it was truly concerned for their welfare.
“Migrant-taxi” NGO ships operating in the Mediterranean have been often described as providing one of the biggest pull factors that continue to facilitate illegal migration to Europe. They’ve been observed countless times patrolling just outside of African territorial waters and collaborating with human smugglers during their “rescues” before ferrying the migrants straight to EU ports, despite being much closer to non-European destinations.
Salvini and his decision not to resign even if convicted in the first instance—after which he could have appealed two more times—had the full support of Meloni, whose anti-migration policies had already shown great success in reducing illegal entries within just two years of taking office.
Meloni is also locked in a legal struggle with activist judges who aim to block the government from using the recently inaugurated migrant reception centers in Albania. The Rome civil court suspended the Albania protocol while waiting for a decision from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) that’s not expected until next summer—even as the European Commission itself is preparing to implement the same measure at the EU level after it was demanded by the majority of member states.
A day before the ruling, a cheerful and calm Salvini met his allies from the Patriots group in Brussels, where they reconfirmed their “unshakeable” support for him.
“The Patriots’ position is clear: the EU external borders have to be protected and NGO ships have to be stopped from delivering illegal migrants on our shores,” Kinga Gál, The Patriots’ first vice president said back in September, adding that Brussels should help and support those fulfilling their legal obligations to protect the Schengen area instead of threatening and harassing them.
VOX’s parliamentary leader Jorge Buxadé said that standing up to such blatant political persecution “is the only admissible position in a democracy.”
Representatives of the group, including Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán and Spanish VOX leader Santiago Abascal posed while holding T-shirts with Salvini’s face and the message “guilty of having defended Italy.”
“Worried? No, absolutely determined,” Salvini wrote on X while sharing a video of the meeting.
