Elon Musk attacks Italian judges on the subject of migrants

American billionaire Elon Musk, who recently called the German chancellor “crazy”, intervened on Tuesday in a tense debate on the migration policy of the far-right Italian government by criticizing judges on the peninsula.

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The implicated Rome judges on Monday rejected the detention of a second group of migrants transferred to centers managed by Rome in Albania, referring the case to the European Court of Justice (CJEU).

The retention of a first group transferred last month was also rejected by Italian judges, who cited a recent CJEU ruling questioning the way Italy designates countries as “safe” for migrant repatriations .

“These judges need to go,” Musk, the world’s richest man who played a major role in the re-election of Republican Donald Trump as president of the United States, commented on the social network X which he owns.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, head of the far-right, anti-immigration League, responded in English that “Elon Musk is right.”

The center-left Democratic Party (PD), the main opposition party, on the other hand, denounced the comment as “unacceptable interference” in Italian affairs.

Italian lawyers also reacted.

Lawyer Enresto Carbone, member of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, castigated these “new oligarchs” aspiring to “control world politics and who are a danger for democracy”.

The National Association of Magistrates also expressed its “astonishment”. “It is no longer the independence of the judiciary that is at issue here but the sovereignty of the Italian State,” said its vice-president, Alessandra Maddalena.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s attempts to reduce the number of migrants arriving on Italy’s shores each year have been repeatedly challenged in court, often successfully, including the agreement signed with Tirana last year.

This agreement provides for processing in Albania the requests of migrants taken care of by the Italian authorities in the Mediterranean and considered to come from “safe” countries.

But judges had already ruled last month in the case of the first group of migrants transferred to Albania, ordering that the 12 men from Bangladesh and Egypt be taken to Italy.

The judges had cited a CJEU ruling stating that EU states can only designate entire countries as safe, not parts of countries, while Italy’s list included some countries with dangerous zones .

In response, the government passed a law limiting its list to 19 countries, down from 22 previously.

But in a judgment handed down Monday on the second group of transferred migrants, seven men from Egypt and Bangladesh, judges in Rome said they wanted clarification from the CJEU to ensure that Italian law complied with the texts. Europeans.

Elon Musk last week described Olaf Scholz as “crazy” on X after the breakup of the German chancellor’s coalition, undermined by disagreements.