Italy's conservative government will put 500 more soldiers on the streets of Milan and has made organized violence at public demonstrations a crime of its own under an emergency decree that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's cabinet approved Tuesday evening, after a weekend of rioting and looting in the city. The government's summary of the decree says the armed forces contingent assigned to territorial control under the operation known as Strade Sicure will grow by 500 for Milan through Dec. 31. Meloni brought the measure to the Council of Ministers together with the ministers of the interior, justice and defense.
Demonstrations over the rising cost of living turned violent over the weekend in several Italian cities, including Milan, Turin and Bologna, as protesters clashed with police and shops were looted, Euronews reported. Meloni said nearly 200 police officers had been injured and 330 people detained. "Destroying and stealing is not protest, it is crime, and the state's response must be firm," she said in a video posted on X after the cabinet met.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, appearing before reporters with Justice Minister Carlo Nordio, called what happened in Milan an unprecedented phenomenon and said there had been no inaction, the newspaper Il Foglio reported.
Much of the decree is about minors. Anyone who has turned 14 is now presumed able to understand and intend their actions unless the contrary is proven, while the lighter sentences for minors found responsible stay in place. Until now, under the Rocco Code, a minor's capacity had to be established, Euronews noted. So-called delayed arrests now extend to minors, and judges may impose precautionary measures on those over 16 even if the measures disrupt an ongoing educational program.
Parents are drawn in as well. When a minor, even one who cannot be held criminally liable, takes part in certain crimes, whoever holds parental responsibility faces administrative penalties unless they can show they could not have prevented it. Prefects may order compensation for damage to public property directly, and private victims can recover losses faster through an injunction.
The new protest offense applies to anyone who, during a demonstration, joins a group of at least five people acting in an organized way, even occasionally, that uses or throws objects capable of causing injury or dangerous devices and creates a concrete danger to people's safety. Those who organize or promote such a group, or incite the violence, including online, face heavier penalties. Nordio said people who organize groups for violent demonstrations, including through social media, could face four to 12 years in prison. The decree also adds an aggravating circumstance for damage done by an organized group of five or more, raises penalties for some cases of devastation and looting and for attacks on public utility installations during demonstrations, and makes prosecution automatic when police officers are injured on duty.
Police gain wider preventive powers, too. Holding people at police offices for up to 12 hours, already allowed around demonstrations, may now be used during specific operations in crowded places, minors included, when concrete evidence gives well-founded reason to believe someone is engaging in conduct that poses a concrete danger to security. Existing safeguards, including the specific protections for minors, remain. A questore, the provincial police chief, may bar people from gathering with specific people in specified places for up to a year, a ban that can reach 14-year-olds who have acted violently or intimidatingly in a group and already faced prevention orders or convictions for crimes against people or property. A fast-track procedure lets extra magistrates be assigned where large numbers of arrests must be validated within legal deadlines.
The cabinet stopped short of giving the soldiers police powers. A provision that would have assigned them judicial police duties was dropped after talks with the Quirinale, the presidential palace, and a summit at Palazzo Chigi, Il Sole 24 Ore reported, on the view that soldiers lack the training for such work; police unions had also objected. The change reportedly followed opposition from President Sergio Mattarella, Euronews said. The 500, drawn from the Folgore Parachute Brigade, will instead serve as public security officers alongside the police and Carabinieri, joining about 6,800 soldiers already deployed across 58 provinces under Strade Sicure, which has paired soldiers with police since August 2008, according to the financial daily.
That fell short of what Defense Minister Guido Crosetto had sought. On the eve of the meeting he wrote on X that adding troops made sense only if the cabinet let them act as police for the time needed to support the Carabinieri, the police and the Guardia di Finanza, which he put at three months. Il Foglio reported that he considered the outcome a missed opportunity to deploy the military differently. His ministry said he would make the 500 available immediately to reinforce garrisons and step up surveillance of sensitive sites, freeing the police and Carabinieri to concentrate on preventing and fighting crime and on public order.
The troop question had divided Meloni's coalition. The League pressed for an immediate increase and wants the program raised to 10,000 soldiers, Brothers of Italy argued that any expansion should rest on a broader reorganization, and Forza Italia warned against the military becoming a permanent substitute for the police, Il Sole 24 Ore reported.
Elly Schlein, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, said repression alone was not enough, noting that this was the government's sixth security decree in a row, ANSA reported. Speaking at a Coldiretti agriculture and food forum, she said the government had worked only on repression and never on prevention. Citing Franco Gabrielli, whom she described as someone who knows something about public order, she said trying to prevent violence never means justifying it, then asked how preventive detention could work for minors if it had not worked for adults, and raised doubts about its proportionality. She pointed as well to the attempt to hand soldiers judicial police powers, which she said had drawn an intervention from the presidency, and urged the government to convene the mayors and stop passing the buck on security.