Author
The Reception Decree sets out the reception standards for third-country nationals making an application for international protection on the territory, including at the borders, in the transit zones or in Italian territorial waters.[1]
It provides that reception conditions apply from the moment a third-country national manifests their will to apply for international protection and declares that they have no economic means to guarantee theirs and their family’s survival.[2] The criteria of destitution is to be evaluated by the Prefecture, by comparing the financial resources of the applicant(s) and the amount of the annual social allowance (assegno sociale annuo).[3]
In practice, no assessment of financial resources is carried out when the asylum applicant makes their application, or even when they access the system; both Prefectures and the SAI Central Service customarily consider the self-declaration as sufficient. However, during the accommodation period, Prefectures are required to verify that the conditions, including economic conditions, which have determined access, still exist. In 2023, similarly to previous years, this has resulted in a worrying number of withdrawals of reception conditions (see below). In 2025, according to Asgi experience, many people were ordered to leave accommodation facilities because, by taking up gainful employment, they had exceeded the poverty threshold set at €7,002.97 for 2025.
According to the Reception Decree, no additional requirements than those expressly listed in the decree can be asked to grant access to reception measures.[4] However, Law 187/2024 modified the Reception Decree by introducing a new ground of exclusion from reception measures for those who, without justified reason, apply for asylum after 90 days of entering Italy.[5] The law expressly referred to the provision of a new accelerated procedure for those who enter Italy illegally and apply for asylum after 90 days.[6] Thus, it should apply only to those who have entered Italy illegally. The exclusion decision must be taken in writing and motivated by the territorially competent Prefecture. It must take into account the vulnerability of the applicant. Even if the rule recalls art. 20 of the Reception Directive, it does not respect its content since, while the Directive provides for a mere hypothesis of reduction of reception measures, this rule regulates exclusion from reception measures.
Moreover, Law 187/2024, formalizing an already existing practice, introduced a priority criterion for access to reception facilities for people rescued at sea, making access to the reception system of all other people (arrived by land, autonomous disembarkations, Dublin returnees, etc.) subject to the availability of non-reserved places.[7] After the entry into force of the law, the Ministry of the Interior issued a Circular Note[8] in which it invited all Prefectures to take into account this criterion. However, on exclusion, the Circular refers to mere entry (and not irregular entry) in the 90 days prior to the asylum request as a criterion for exclusion from reception.
By a decision published on 29 April 2026, the administrative court for Veneto ruled that this exclusion provision must be disapplied, due to its conflict with Article 20 of the Reception Conditions Directive, which does not provide for any limits on access to reception measures on this basis. Furthermore, the court noted that prioritising access to reception for “those who have arrived in the national territory following sea rescue operations” does not affect the principle that reception must be guaranteed to all individuals who have applied for international protection.[9]
However, some Prefectures, such as the one in Siena, went beyond the scope of the new rule by providing for additional exclusion criteria. According to the note disseminated by the Prefecture of Siena on 14 January 2025: 1) asylum applicants with a mental disease can only be admitted upon presentation of a certificate from the competent health district attesting to the compatibility of their presence in a facility that does not have specific health services; 2) Dublin asylum applicants have access to the facilities only if Italy’s responsibility has already been declared.
On March 2025, ASGI submitted an appeal against the note, which was upheld by the administrative court of Tuscany.[10] The court ruled that there was no legitimate justification to delayaccess to reception measures for “Dublin” asylum applicants, given that Article 3 of Directive 2013/33/EU requires the application of reception measures to all third-country nationals and stateless persons who have applied for international protection, which includes “Dublin” applicants. Regarding the preference given to individuals rescued in SAR operations, the Court observed that such priority is unobjectionable as, based on practical experience, these individuals arrive in the country with nothing, but provided that other asylum seekers also gain access to reception within the prescribed timeframes. However, the Court held that, in the absence of explicit domestic statutory provisions, the “reasonable time” for accessing reception corresponds to the maximum duration for the conclusion of administrative proceedings, namely 180 days. Consequently, the Court found that a waiting period of up to 180 days to access reception measures is reasonable and not open to challenge. ASGI appealed the ruling to the Council of State, and the case is pending as of June 2026.
As already mentioned, government centres and temporary centres (CARA, CAS and CdA) can only accommodate asylum applicants. SAI facilities, instead, are now conceived to accommodate beneficiaries of international protection (refugee status and subsidiary protection), unaccompanied foreign minors and, in case of available places, vulnerable asylum applicants, asylum applicants who entered Italy legally through complementary pathways (government-led resettlements or private sponsored humanitarian admission programs) and holders of the following national permits and complementary protections:[11]
- Special Protection (Consolidated Act on Immigration, Article 19 (1 and 1.1) a Legislative Decree 251/2007, Article 16)
- Medical treatment (Consolidated Act on Immigration, Article 19 (2 d-bis)
- Social protection for trafficking in human beings (Consolidated Act on Immigration, Article 18)
- Social protection for domestic violence (Consolidated Act on Immigration, Article 18-bis)
- Disaster (Consolidated Act on Immigration, Article 20-bis)
- Significant labour exploitation (Consolidated Act on Immigration, Article 22 (12-quater)
- Acts of exceptional civil value (Consolidated Act on Immigration, Article 42-bis)
- Special cases (D.L. 113/2018, Article 1 (9).
Applicants for international protection subject to a Dublin procedure, both incoming and outgoing, may access the reception system. However, as provided under national legislation for all asylum applicants,[12] they may no longer access SAI centres unless they belong to vulnerable categories and there are places available (See Dublin).
Access to the reception system may follow different procedures:
- For asylum applicants who has just arrived on Italian territory after search and rescue operations, access to the reception system is, so to speak, automatic. However, because of the hotspot approach and the use of information sheets (“foglio notizie”) that are often neither translated nor explained to migrants, it is not uncommon for people who have expressed their intention to seek asylum to be sent to CPRs.[13] When accommodated, they are placed according to a national and regional dispersion policy, which should follow agreed criteria (see Dispersal of asylum applicants).
- When an asylum applicant seeking reception is already present on national territory, the request to access the system is processed by the State Police office in the place where the person is present or domiciled. In such cases, the rule introduced by article 4 of DL 133/2023[14] negatively impacts asylum applicants’ access the asylum procedure. Under that provision, if applicants do not present themselves at the Questura to lodge their asylum application, the earlier expression of intent to seek asylum does not constitute an application according to the Procedures Decree. In practice, accommodation is rarely granted immediately after the expression of intent, and, while waiting for an address to be connected to the asylum applicant, formalisation is delayed for weeks or even months, during which people are left without any assistance. To avoid living on the street, some accept temporary hospitality or try to formalise their application before other Questura, only to return to the competent one and find that neither their asylum application nor their accommodation request exist anymore. They are then requested to register again, with the risk that their application may in some cases be treated as a subsequent application.
In addition, under the provision introduced by L 187/2024,[15] these applicants may access accommodation only to the extent that non-reserved places (for people rescued at sea) are available.
- Where people needing access to the reception system already hold a protection permit, they must contact the SAI Central Service, through the local Prefecture, the CAS/SAI managing bodies, lawyers, or other public or private bodies. However, the reporting procedures are far from perfect and reports are often duplicated by different actors, which means that the Central Service is unable to process them properly. Moreover, the time taken by the Central Service to process a request and assign a place is often very long, mainly because of communication problems, to the point that migrants often prefer to present themselves directly at a SAI project and request admission, rather than wait for an assignment from the central offices. The Central Service does not keep count of the access requests it receives, which makes it difficult to allocate the available places according to set priority criteria, especially given the large number of requests.[16] In addition, not all Prefectures consider it their duty to report to the SAI the presence of beneficiaries of protection within their territory, and, at best, Prefectures only report the transfer to SAI of people already accommodated in CAS facilities activated by them in their territories. The Ministry of Interior periodically sends operational guidance to Prefectures on reporting regarding reception in SAI.
- Moreover, after the Cutro Decree (DL 20/2023) came into force, it is not uncommon for people, after being granted protection, to be ordered to leave the accommodation project without even checking whether places are available in SAI projects. Once out of the reception system, it is then very difficult to re-access it. During 2024 and 2025, many people were ordered to leave CAS and governmental centres immediately after obtaining international or national protection.
Moreover, as reported by Altreconomia in an investigation published in November 2025, at least 5,600 people had their reception benefits revoked in 2024 and the first six months of 2025 because they earned wages that exceeded, even slightly, the threshold set for the social allowance (€538.69 per month in 2025). The highest numbers of revocations for this reason were recorded in Turin (464), Treviso (399), Forlì-Cesena (345), Modena (304), and Genoa (231).[17]
Italy-Albania deal
Through L. 14 of 21 February 2024, the Italian Parliament ratified the Protocol signed in Rome on 6 November 2023 between the Italian and the Albanian governments, aimed at cooperation on migration matters.[18] Thus, people seeking protection rescued in international waters by Italian ships and subject to the border procedure [19] could be transported directly to Albania where, under the agreement, three centres were established under Italian jurisdiction. These included one centre in Shengjin for health screening, identification, and the collection of asylum applications, and two centres in Gjader, one serving as an accommodation centre (880 places) and the other as a repatriation centre (CPR) (144 places).
In 2024, 62 persons were sent to the Albanian centres, but the Civil Court of Rome, and later the Court of Appeal of Rome, never validated the detention orders; both courts instead referred questions to the CJEU for a preliminary judgement (See Procedures).
In its judgment of 1 August 2025 in joined cases C-758/24 and C-749/24, the CJEU held that Article 37 of Directive 2013/32, read in conjunction with Annex I thereto, must be interpreted as precluding a Member State from designating as a safe country of origin a third country that does not satisfy, for certain categories of persons, the substantive conditions for that designation set out in Annex I to the Directive. This applies even where, as in the Italian case, the designation as safe country was made by law.[20]
Since people subject to the Albanian procedure were those subject to the border procedure, i.e. asylum applicants coming from safe countries of origin or evading border controls, the CJEU decision directly affected transfers to Albania as in most cases the country of origin of rescued people could no longer be included in the safe countries of origin list. However, by changing the operation of the centres through Decree Law no. 37 of 28 March 2025, later converted into L. 75/2025, the government stated that the Albanian centres could be also used to transfer people already held in Italian CPRs, after validation of their detention. [21]
Reception and obstacles to accessing the asylum procedure
Barriers to access to reception in Italy mostly depend on two main factors:
- Bureaucratic and administrative obstacles to access the international protection procedure.
- Shortage of available places and management issues within the various levels of the reception system.
As described in detail under Registration of the asylum application, for years, the Italian Police Headquarters (Questure) have put in place various strategies to limit and delay access to the asylum procedure for people who present themselves spontaneously at their offices. Applicants are often forced to wait months to file their asylum applications. These practices, which intensify as the with number of requests for protection increases, both nationally and at the level of the individual Questura, also have direct consequences on applicants’ right to reception conditions. Although asylum applicants are entitled by law to material reception conditions as soon as they express their intention to apply for asylum (making phase), access to reception facilities is often postponed until, at minimum, after registration and lodging of the application by State Police.[22] Even then, applicants often have to wait seveeral additional weeks, sleeping rough, in makeshift lodgings, or with members of the same community if they can afford it.[23]
The shortage of places in the reception system is a recurring issue in Italy. Because of policies aimed at reducing public spending and the chronic lack of medium- and long-term planning (see Management and Coordination), the overall number of available places continues to decrease, and emergency situations recur every summer. The system quickly became saturated, prompting Prefectures to refuse requests to access reception, or, in some cases, to ignore them. A 2022 study by Altreconomia[24] estimated that, even though thousands of asylum applicants were left without access to reception measures and the Government repeatedly stated that “there are no more places available in the system(s)”, at least 5,000 places remained unoccupied in 2022 as a reserve for unexpected arrivals by disembarkations. According to data shared by the MOI Department of Civil Liberties following a FOIA request by ASGI, as of 31 December 2024, 95,453 of the 96,890 places available were occupied. In response to a FOIA access request in 2026, the Ministry reported that as of 31 December 2025 there were 101,106 places in CAS,[25] 3,343 in government centres, and 3,652 in hotspots.
As explained in the next section, SAI facilities are activated on a voluntary basis: municipalities decide whether to join the SAI network and have full discretion to extend, increase or reduce the number of places, regardless of reception needs arising at the national or local level. The chronic shortage of SAI places forces local Prefectures to rely on temporary measures and set up government reception centres (CAS), but the drastically lowered costs set out in the tender specifications for these facilities have de facto favoured large centres managed by multinationals or for-profit organisations and have excluded many of the small non-profit and professional organisations and cooperatives from the accommodation landscape. The conceptualisation of reception obligations as a short-term emergency, together with the openly expressed intention to limit arrivals, has so far prevented serious and coherent reforms capable of building an efficient accommodation system able to face the recurring increase in arrivals.
At the same time, the lack of transparency regarding updated CAS capacity, and the reluctance of Prefectures to seek places outside their own jurisdiction, prevents applicants from directly requesting and obtaining assignment to a place in the national system, and usually leaves them waiting on the list held by individual prefectures.
As a result, the number of places in the ordinary reception system remains far below actual needs. Another issue is that, even when places are available in another region, the competent Prefecture have may no knowing about them if the central authority does not respond to their request. In many cases, Prefectures do not even proactively present this request to the central administration.
In this context, the provision introduced by Law 187/2024, which gives priority to the reception of asylum applicants rescued at sea, reinforces an already existing practice and allowed Prefectures to justify refusals to access reception on a legal basis that appears incompatible with the Reception Directive.
Reception of applicants subject to accelerated procedures
Italian legislation does not provide for specific or differentiated forms of reception for asylum applicants who are subject to the accelerated procedure. However, in almost all cases in which the asylum application is processed under an accelerated procedure, any appeal filed against the rejection of the application for international protection does not entail the automatic suspension of the effects of the decision,[26] which has direct repercussions on the right to reception. If the request for suspension is not accepted by the competent Court, the applicant loses access to reception conditions. After a judgment of the Court of Cassation in United Sections no. 11399/2024, most courts have held that when the public administration exceeds the maximum length of the accelerated procedure, this requires that the application be channelled into the ordinary procedure and therefore automatic suspensive effect of the appeal. (See Accelerated procedure). However, it is not clear if courts will apply these principles expressed by the Court of Cassation in the new landscape of accelerated procedures under the Pact on Migration and Asylum.
Reception at second instance
The Reception Decree provides that accommodation is ensured for asylum applicants until a decision is taken by the Territorial Commission (the first instance deciding authority) and, in case of a rejection of the asylum application, until the expiration of the timeframe to lodge an appeal before the Civil Court. When the appeal has automatic suspensive effect, accommodation is guaranteed to the appellant until the court gives judgement. However, when appeals have no automatic suspensive effect, the applicant can request ad hoc suspension and remain in the reception centre until a decision on the request for suspensive effect is taken by the competent judge. If it is positive, the applicant is authorised to stay in Italy for the rest of the procedure and has the right to remain in the reception centre where they already live.[27]
Concerning reception during onward appeals, following Decree Law 13/2017, implemented by L 46/2017, accommodation is usually withdrawn for asylum applicants whose claims have been rejected at first appeal. Courts do not recognise the suspensive effect of the appeal within the short time frame (see Regular Procedure: Appeal).
[1] Article 1(1) Reception Decree.
[2] Article 1(2) Reception Decree.
[3] Article 14(1) and (3) Reception Decree. The Social Allowance is an economic contribution of a welfare nature provided by the National Institute for Social Security (Istituto Nazionale di Previdenza Sociale, INPS) for 13 months to all those who are in poor economic conditions. For the year 2022, the amount corresponded to € 6,097.39 and corresponds to € 6,542.51 for 2023.
[4] Article 4(4) Reception Decree.
[5] Article 15 quinquies Decree Law 145/2024 as amended by L. 187/2024 and introducing Article 1 (2 bis) to the Reception Decree.
[6] Article 28 bis (2) lett. e bis.
[7] Article 15 quinquies Decree Law 145/2024 as amended by L. 187/2024 and introducing Article 8 ( 2 bis) to the Reception Decree.
[8] MoI Circular note, 22 January 2025.
[9] Administrative court for Veneto region, decision no, 971/2026, published on 29 April 2026.
[10] Administrative court for Tuscany region, decision no. 1668/2025, published on 22 October 2025.
[11] Article 1-sexies(1) Decree Law 416/1989, as modified by Decree Law 130/2020.
[12] Article 1(3) Reception Decree. For more information about access to reception for Dublin transferees, please see the relevant paragraph in the Procedures chapter.
[13] The hotspot procedure, to which most people disembarked are subjected, is known to force some individuals into irregularity, to the extent that some migrants are systematically prevented from seeking asylum. This, of course, also produces an immediate exclusion from reception conditions. For more information, see the Procedures chapter.
[14] Introducing Article 6 (3-bis) to the procedure decree.
[15] Article 8 ( 2 bis) to the Reception Decree introduced by L. 187/2024.
[16] See Altreconomia, Scarsa programmazione, posti vuoti e persone al freddo: così ai migranti è negata l’accoglienza, 8 February 2023, available at: https://bit.ly/3oXlaUx.
[17] Altreconomia, ‘Cinquantamila ombre segnano il fallimento del sistema di accoglienza,’ 11 November 2025, available in Italian here.
[18] L. 14/2024, available at: bit.ly/44vBGfr.
[19] According to Article 3 (2) L. 14/2024, those are the ones who could be subject to the procedure.
[20] CJEU, joined cases C-758/24 and C-759/24, decision of 1 August 2025, available here.
[21] Article 1 DL 37/2025, converted by L. 75/2025.
[22] In Italy, the registration and lodging phases are integrated into one step.
[23] For more information, see MSF, Fuori campo, February 2018, available in Italian at: http://bit.ly/2Gagwa2; Fuori campo, March 2016, available in Italian at: http://bit.ly/2letTQd, 11; ANCI et al., Rapporto sulla protezione internazionale in Italia, 2014, available in Italian at: http://bit.ly/15k6twe, 124.
[24] Altreconomia, ‘Inchiesta sull’accoglienza selettiva: chi arriva in Italia via terra resta fuori’, in Altreconomia 254, December 2022, available in Italian here.
[25] The data represents the “actual capacity” of accommodation centres, not the official capacity nor the actual occupancy.
[26] According to Article 35 bis (3) Procedure Decree.
[27] Article 14(4) Reception Decree.