ANM chief urges return to 'respectful dialogue' with govt

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 23 - The head of magistrates union ANM, Giuseppe Santalucia, on Wednesday called for a return to "respectful dialogue" between government and the judiciary after cabinet members called Rome judges who nixed the detention of migrants in Albania "politicised" and also slammed an email from a magistrate who called Premier Giorgia Meloni "dangerous" in her plans to reform the judiciary.
    Talking to Sky, Santalucias said that Meloni was not dangerous and that magistrate Marco Patarnello's characterisation of her as such had been "inadequate".
    'The government should go back to talking to the judiciary in terms of due respect in the country's institutional communication," Santalucia told Sky Tg24.
    "Even if they are written in French, Italian judges know how to read sentences," he added regarding the decision of the European Court of Justice on migrants according to which the Court of Rome did not validate the transfer of migrants to Albania decided by the government.
    Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, threatening sanctions against the Rome magistrates, said they had not fully understood the ECJ ruling partly because it was written in French.
    In its October 4 ruling, to which the Rome judges bowed, the ECJ said that not all the territory of certain countries could be considered safe and so migrants could not be returned to them.
    These countries included Egypt and Bangladesh, the countries of provenance of the first 12 migrants to betaken to the Albanian processing centre under the government's controversial new scheme, which has been criticised for externalising the migrant issue and creating a new Guantanamo but hailed as a potential model by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen among others.
    As for the controversy over the internal email of the deputy prosecutor of the supreme Court of Cassation Patarnello, Santalucia said that "there is no danger, the term 'dangerous' (referring to Meloni, ed.) is not at all adequate.
    "Patarnello's statement lends itself to misunderstanding".
    Patarnello said that Meloni was more dangerous than late premier Silvio Berlusconi, who battled the judiciary for years through a string of legal woes, because she did not have any cases pending for herself.
    But he ended the email by saying that magistrates should not engage in politics but rather do their jobs as best they could while defending their independence and autonomy.
    Several ministers accused the judiciary of pursuing an anti-government agenda due to the e-mail from Patarnello, a leading member of the leftwing Democratic Magistrature faction of the judiciary, which is politicised.
    On the Albania scheme, the government has now drafted a "primary" decree listing 19 safe countries to which migrants can be returned.
    They are: Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Morocco, Montenegro, Peru, Senegal, Serbia, Sri Lanka and Tunisia.
    Cameroon, Colombia and Nigeria have been dropped from the list.
    photo: Santalucia (R) and Justice Minister Carlo Nordio (ANSA).