Right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is passing new hard-line policing measures to style herself as Italy’s guardian of law and order, but her opponents fear her security decrees are intended to prevent critics — particularly on the left — from legitimately protesting.
Her decree of Feb. 5, which greatly increases police powers, followed on the heels of violent street protests in Turin over the closure of the radical left-wing Askatasuna community center.
Leaving no doubt about how the government views the danger from such clashes, Justice Minister Carlo Nordio said the goal was to prevent “the return of the Red Brigades,” referring to the left-wing terror group active in the 1970s and 1980s.
Being tough on public unrest and crime is core to Meloni’s political identity. This is now the fifth time Meloni has passed a decree — an emergency instrument that grants her the power to write laws that take effect immediately without parliamentary approval — to reform Italy’s criminal code since she was elected in 2022.
After the violence in Turin, Meloni was quick to visit two injured policeman in hospital, one of whom had been assaulted with a hammer. “We will do what is necessary to restore order in this nation,” she wrote in a statement.
Crucially, Meloni does not dismiss such eruptions of violence as one-offs, but casts them as part of broader politicized or criminal trends. In the case of Turin, she insisted she was not targeting protesters but “organized criminals.” Going even further, she condemned “enemies of Italy and Italians” for protesting against this year’s Winter Olympics.
Her political opponents accuse her of going too far with her law-and-order crackdown.
Former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, leader of the populist 5Star Movement, accused Meloni of wanting to “prevent the expression of dissent.” Elly Schlein, leader of the center-left Democratic Party, called the laws “freedom-killing,” and said her party was “worried by the weaponization” of current affairs by public institutions.
Crucially, President Sergio Mattarella warned some of the measures could be unconstitutional and asked the government to rewrite them.
Criminalizing protests
The new powers and rights for the police are indeed sweeping.
They include a “legal shield” for officers, who will be protected from official investigations while “carrying out their duties;” they have gained stop-and-frisk rights, and can now impose 12-hour preventive detentions. There are also stricter rules against the possession of knives, while special “red zones” will be created, where people who have been reported for crimes in the past five years will be subject to removal.
Domenico Carretta, Turin city councillor for sport and major events from the Democratic Party, told POLITICO Meloni’s initiatives did not address the real difficulties Italian cities are facing.
He accused the prime minister of responding to the country’s “gut reactions and the urgency of the moment rather than getting to the root of the problems.”
“There is a risk of criminalizing the very act of taking to the streets,” he added. The focus, he argued, should instead be on law enforcement staffing and resources, not designing aggressive policies.
When it came to the violence over the closure of Askatasuna, Carretta agreed the scenes had been brutal but hadn’t justified a clampdown on dissenting opinions.
“We felt that same indignation — we saw Turin violated,” Carretta explained, but “restricting the possibility to demonstrate does not strike me as the best response.”
The images from the Jan. 31 violence spread on social media, with both sides accusing each other of brutality. In addition to the policeman struck with a hammer, a photographer alleged he was assailed by officers for taking pictures of one of their colleagues.
According Italo Di Sabato, coordinator at the Osservatorio Repressione, a civil society organization that promotes studies on repressive governance, the security decrees serve a specific purpose: “The Meloni government’s main action [is] an exercise in propaganda around the word ‘security’.”
While Meloni says she is working toward her idea of a state that “defends those who defend us and that restores security and freedom to citizens,” Di Sabato said her security package was actually an attempt to stir up a “perception of insecurity” across the country.
Based on the interior ministry’s own data, homicides were down 15 percent in 2025 compared with 2024, and ISTAT shows overall crime rates are at the same level as 2018, before the pandemic.
Carretta noted a fundamental flaw in the government’s argument, paraphrasing an allegory used by Turin Mayor Stefano Lo Russo: “I go to the stadium with my son, the ultras cause trouble, and what’s the response? To close the stadium? To criminalize everyone who was there for a sporting event?”
Italy’s Meloni doubles down on law and order
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