It is right to change the 2002 Bossi-Fini law to grant new asylum rights in the face f global changes, former foreign minister, Hose Speaker and rightwing National Alliance party leader Gianfranco Fini, one of the architects of the law, told ANSA Saturday after Cabinet Secretary Alfredo Mantovano told La Stampa the government was aiming for changes to crack down on smugglers while boosting legal channels to migration.

The 2002 law, whose other architect was former rightwing League leader and reform minister Umberto Bossi, introduced criminal sanctions for persons caught illegally entering the country or who return after being expelled. Fini told ANSA: “The so-called Bossi-Fini law has been in force for 20 years, it must be changed because the origin of the migratory phenomenon has changed profoundly.

“It today has global dimensions and is increasingly correlated to the moral duty, as well as the international right, of guaranteeing asylum rights to those fleeing war, risks of genocide, natural catastrophes, and mass violations of fundamental human rights.” Mantovano, who has the immigration brief in Premier Giorgia Meloni’s government, told La Stampa earlier that the government was aiming for a new law combining “toughness, yes, but only against traffickers, while all the rest serves to facilitate legal entries.

“Our position is balanced.” Mantovano went on, saying that the Bossi-Fini law has now become a “Harlequin law, and we have to do something new, but calmly and in a well thought-through manner”.

Source: Ansa News Agency (ANA)