The Guardian and the Irish Times comment on the latest report from the Council of Europe on Italy:

“Lengthy proceedings and the treatment of Roma and migrants in Italy raise serious human rights concerns” said today Nils Muižnieks, the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, releasing a report based on the findings of his visit to Italy carried out on 3-6 July.

“It is high time that durable solutions be found to the excessive length of court proceedings, which is a long-standing human rights problem in Italy, generating the highest number of so-called repetitive cases lodged before the European Court of Human Rights.” The Commissioner stressed that no solution to this problem is likely to work “unless it benefits from the full collaboration of all stakeholders, including the Ministry of Justice, the High Council of the Judiciary, as well as judges, prosecutors and lawyers”.

A video clip filmed from an eight-story high building outside Rome, a place that has only been inspected and visited by the Commissioner: living situation for refugees in Italy

 

Last week the Irish Times published a report written by the Irish Refugee Council, which deals with the State’s system for accommodating asylum seekers, known as direct provision. The report suggests many families are living in circumstances of extreme poverty in overcrowded accommodation with inadequate food: Asylum children in ‘extreme poverty’

 

New Europecomments on the letter sent by Caritas Europa to the European Ombudsman Nikiforos Diamandouros expressing concerns about the way the European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders (FRONTEX) works. Press Association reports that at least 4500 cases were wrongly dumped in an archive of ‘lost’ asylum cases.

 

Read the report by the Council of Europe on Italy here.