Author
According to Article 12(2-bis) of the Procedure Decree, the CNDA may designate countries for the nationals of which the personal interview can be omitted, on the basis that subsidiary protection can be granted (see Regular Procedure: Personal Interview). As of March 2025, the CNDA has not yet designated such countries.
The issue of the Safe Country of Origin decrees has directly affected the treatment and prerogatives of asylum applicants whose nationalities are indicated by the decrees. As seen above, the list now includes Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Morocco, Montenegro, Peru, Senegal, Serbia, Sri Lanka and Tunisia.
Out of the main 5 nationalities of asylum applicants in 2024 – Bangladesh, Peru, Pakistan, Egypt and Tunisia – 4 on the safe country of origin list. This leads the applications to be channelled in the accelerated procedure. Due to the reduced procedural guarantees it entails, this might have an effect on recognition rates. The rejections rates in 2024 for nationals of Bangladesh, Egypt and Tunisia were significantly high, standing, respectively, at 80.3%, 86.2% and 85.5%. Rejection rates for Peruvian citizens were instead of 65.8%.
In practice, as already highlighted in the section regarding Registration, some nationalities face more difficulties in accessing the asylum procedure, both at hotspots and at Questure. In 2021, ASGI reported that people from Tunisia were notified expulsion orders despite having expressly requested international protection with the practice of the “double information paper”.[1] Serious criticalities in access to the procedure, due to lack of information provision and legal assistance as well as de facto detention, were reported by ASGI with specific regard to Tunisians arriving in the island of Pantelleria, where landed migrants are channelled in hotspot-like procedures (see in Detention).[2] In 2024, according to ASGI’s experience, similar difficulties persisted.
On 30 March 2023, the ECHR condemned Italy for the violation of Article 4 Protocol 4 for the removal to Tunisia of 4 Tunisian nationals who were removed to Tunisia after being placed in de facto detention in the Lampedusa hotspot without proper regard to their individual situation.[3]
[1] ASGI reports that with the practice of the “double information paper” implemented in Lampedusa’s hotspot, police authorities have foreign nationals – and especially those coming from Tunisia – sign a second information paper in which they formally “renounce” international protection declaring that there are no impediments to their repatriation, even if they had previously expressed their will to request international protection. Rights on the skids. The experiment of quarantine ships and main points of criticism, ASGI, March 2021, available at: https://bit.ly/3tWEK25.
[2] ASGI, La frontiera di Pantelleria: una sospensione del diritto. Report del sopralluogo giuridico di ASGI, June 2021, available in Italian at: https://bit.ly/3tcSwyD.
[3] J. and others v. Italy, Application no. 21329/18, 30 March 2023, available at HUDOC: bit.ly/42TBqVD.