Practical guide on strategic litigation against pushbacks in the Mediterranean and for the right to enter

Aimed at civil society organisations, legal practitioners and university legal clinics, the Guide is a working tool for the development of effective instruments to combat the practice of illegal pushbacks in the central Mediterranean.

Returns are one of the key tools of current migration management policies. Through the externalisation policies promoted by the European Union and its Member States, in recent years, multiple strategies have been tried to block people on the move and return them to their countries of origin, third countries or previous transit countries, circumventing or evading the rules protecting the fundamental rights of returned persons. In particular, over the last fifteen years, mechanisms for delegating rejections have been developed, aimed at removing responsibility for unlawful conduct from the Italian authorities.

The Guide presents one of the legal tools for combating such violations: the development of litigation aimed at obtaining entry visas for protection requests, in response to the unlawful conduct of Italian or European authorities in carrying out rejections.

Litigation to obtain entry visas is particularly significant as a tool to combat the Italian authorities' policies of delegating rejections. The possibility of requesting and obtaining, through litigation, the issuance of an entry visa and thus undertaking a safe journey to Italy is an act of great strength, both from a legal and symbolic point of view: it allows the abnormality and abnormality of the authorities' actions to be revealed, recognises and attributes responsibility, and paves the way for alternative solutions.

After a brief theoretical introduction, the Guide analyses three specific cases and the evolution of case law resulting from the litigation. The presentation of the cases allows for the sharing of a methodology of intervention, the tools used and the main critical issues encountered.

The multiplication of these initiatives is essential to strengthen their impact and promote a shift towards rescue policies and the opening of borders. We hope that this Guide will be a useful tool for disseminating these forms of litigation and the methodologies through which they are developed.