FACING THE DIFFICULT MANAGEMENT OF FLOWS OF MIGRANTS AND ASYLUM SEEKERS TO THE EU: ITALY AS A CASE STUDY

"Especially since mid-2015, Canadians have been touched and troubled by events taking place faraway, across the Atlantic, in Europe and the Mediterranean Basin, where scenes of migrants desperate for a chance to live in dignity and refugees fleeing for their lives have become commonplace. Unprepared for a surge of migrant flows at a magnitude unseen since World War II, European countries, individually as well as collectively, have been at a loss. An integrated European Union, the product of a peace, prosperity and stability project devised over sixty years ago, may be at risk. Inclusive to its member States, the socio-political effects of the open-border regime are looming larger and gloomier than the economic dreaded impact of a Grexit from the monetary union. In her piece “Facing the Difficult Management of Flows of Migrants and Asylum Seekers to the EU: Italy as a Case Study”, the Italian law professor and lawyer, Chiara Favilli, lays out the complexities of the European regional (international) refugee law. These embody an entanglement of EU, European human rights, member States’, and national non-member States’, laws. The challenge faced by Italy — a country gate to the EU — serves as a compelling case study. Favilli’s detailed account and analysis offer insights, and consequently raise issues, pertinent to international legal challenges faced also by Canada as it struggles with sharing in the human responsibility for the same refugees".