Digitalization of proceedings in Italy: the strange case of international protection , in Translating Knowledge Into Innovation Dynamics. IFKAD 2024 proceedings

Despite the need to speed up and improve the efficiency of the justice system and of judicial proceedings concerning international protection, the instruments adopted by the Italian national legislator do not seem to have yet found effective application and, above all, consistency with the guarantees of due process as required by international Law and European Union Law. Specifically, after an initial overview of the so-called European migration emergency of 2015, which led more than a million asylum seekers to seek refuge in Europe, the main measures aimed at speeding up decisions on international protection will be resumed. Among those, the measure of hearing-videotaping at administrative level will be considered as a tool to overcome the need for a new hearing in front of the (specialised) judge. According to the premises of the Law, these tools have also become necessary in the difficulties of a significant backlog in the field. That is not only due to the increase of the number of (first and subsequent) applications in Italy, but to some procedural degenerations which, looking at the efficiency of the system, seem to have overcome the first and most important need for the protection of the rights of applicants for international (and national) protection and the rules of due process. Looking at these limits in applying accelerating mechanisms in a context such as the Italian one, already deprived of a level of judgment in 2017 by Law no. 46 (which converted into law Decree-Law 13 of 2017 and its provisions for other instruments such as the manifest presumed groundlessness or instrumentality of the application, reduction of the deadlines for appeal, and) in which the video recording of asylum seekers’ interviews, once again, takes on the symbolic guise of a "manifesto rule", where technology is “smart” only if it’s faster. It will be emphasized that this procedure, unlike those related to pandemic contingencies such as remote participation in video conferences, risk not shortening the time, but rather requiring particular and greater attention and more guarantees given the difficulties and risks, as well as good practices, already present in the European context with regard to subjective rights that enjoy constitutional protection, designing the strange case of international protection in Italy.