Bologna Ordinary Court (Italy), Decision of December 5, 2025
For an American audience, it is essential to clarify from the outset that Italian complementary protection is neither equivalent to U.S. asylum nor comparable to discretionary humanitarian relief. It is a constitutionally grounded legal mechanism, designed to prevent removals that would violate fundamental rights protected by the Italian Constitution and binding international human rights obligations.
The decision issued on December 5, 2025 by the Tribunale Ordinario di Bologna provides a clear and rigorous explanation of how complementary protection operates today and why it has become the central legal laboratory of the “Integrazione o ReImmigrazione” paradigm.
Complementary protection as a constitutional safeguard
Under Italian law, complementary protection applies when an individual does not qualify for refugee status or subsidiary protection, yet removal from Italian territory would result in a serious and disproportionate interference with fundamental rights, particularly the right to private and family life.
Unlike humanitarian programs based on policy discretion, complementary protection is rooted in constitutional constraints. Italian courts are required to assess whether deportation would breach obligations derived from constitutional principles, international treaties, and the European Convention on Human Rights. When such a breach is established, the State is legally barred from executing removal.
The central role of integration
What distinguishes complementary protection in the Italian system is the legal role of integration. Integration is not a moral claim, a political slogan, or an abstract social goal. It functions as a juridical criterion within a proportionality assessment.
The Bologna court reaffirmed that integration must be real, concrete, and verifiable. Employment, family ties, housing stability, language acquisition, and participation in the social environment are relevant only insofar as they demonstrate that the individual has developed a genuine private and family life within Italian society.
Crucially, integration is not reduced to employment alone. Work matters because it is an indicator of lawful participation in the host society, not because economic productivity in itself grants a right to remain. Integration is understood as adherence to rules, social embeddedness, and personal responsibility within the legal order.
Integration or ReImmigrazione: a selective legal model
This is where the Integrazione o ReImmigrazione paradigm becomes legally operative.
If integration reaches a level where forced removal would cause a disproportionate and constitutionally impermissible rupture of private and family life, complementary protection may be granted.
If such integration is absent — if the individual remains socially disconnected, legally marginal, or unwilling to integrate — then ReImmigrazione is not a punitive measure but the normal and lawful outcome.
In this sense, Italian complementary protection does not undermine migration control. On the contrary, it refines it, introducing a legally controlled distinction between: individuals who have built legally relevant ties with the host society, and individuals whose presence remains purely factual and reversible.
Why this matters for a U.S. audience
From a U.S. perspective, this model may appear unfamiliar because American immigration law largely separates humanitarian protection from integration outcomes. The Italian system, by contrast, embeds integration directly into the legal assessment of removability.
Complementary protection thus operates as a constitutional filter, not as an open-ended humanitarian channel. It protects dignity and fundamental rights without dissolving the principle of territorial sovereignty. It rewards responsibility and integration, while preserving the legitimacy of return where such integration does not exist.
Conclusion
The Bologna decision of December 5, 2025 confirms that complementary protection is not an exception to migration governance but its most advanced legal expression. It transforms integration into a legally measurable factor and positions ReImmigrazione as the coherent counterpart when integration fails.
This is not a political theory. It is an operative legal framework, already functioning within Italian constitutional jurisprudence, and one that offers a structured, rights-based alternative to both indiscriminate admission and indiscriminate removal.
Avv. Fabio Loscerbo
Attorney at Law – EU Transparency Register Lobbyist
Registration No. 280782895721-36
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