Italian Ministry of Interior

ROME - ITALY

National Asylum Commission

A. Introduction

This metadata information is provided by the authorities of Italy to ensure compliance with the requirements of Article 4.1-4.3 (Asylum statistics) of Regulation 862/2007 on Community Statistics on Migration and International Protection.

As required by Article 9 of the Regulation 862/2007, Member States must report to Eurostat on the data sources used, the reasons for the selection of these sources and the effects of the selected data on the quality of the statistics. Member States shall provide Eurostat with all the information necessary to evaluate the quality, comparability and completeness of the statistical information.

The reference document used for assessing the compliance of the concepts and definitions in this metadata file is the document "Asylum - Eurostat Technical guidelines to Asylum templates - 2018, v.4.0" (see section 3.4 "Statistical concepts and definitions" in the ASYLUM ESMS Metadata file).

B. General description and overview of the statistical domain at national level

History of the process 

The asylum database "vestanet" is a unique database that contains information on asylum application since the registration to the final decision.

Major changes that have subsequently been made and why?

Not applicable.

Overview of all outputs of statistics on asylum

Data collection on asylum statistics contains statistical information based on the Article 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 of Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 on Community statistics on migration and international protection.

Asylum applications:

• Asylum, first time and subsequent applicants by citizenship, age and sex (also for unaccompanied minors);
• Persons subject of asylum applications pending at the end of month by citizenship, age and sex (also for unaccompanied minors);
• Asylum applications withdrawn by citizenship, age, sex and type of withdrawal (also for unaccompanied minors);
• Asylum applicants having had their applications processed under the accelerated procedure by citizenship, age and sex (also for unaccompanied minors);
• Applicants having benefited from material reception conditions at the end of the reference year;
• Asylum applicants considered to be unaccompanied minors by citizenship, age and sex.

Decisions on asylum applications:

• First instance decisions on applications by citizenship, age, sex and type of decision (also for unaccompanied minors);
• Decisions withdrawing status granted at first instance decision by citizenship, type of decision and type of reason (also for unaccompanied minors);
• Final decisions in appeal or review on applications by citizenship, age, sex and type of decision (also for unaccompanied minors);
• Decisions withdrawing status granted as final decision in appeal or review by citizenship, type of decision and type of reason (also for unaccompanied minors).

Resettled persons:

• Resettled persons by citizenship, age and sex (also for unaccompanied minors);
• Resettled persons by citizenship, age, sex and country of previous residence;
• Resettled persons by citizenship, age, sex and type of decision.

Resettled persons by citizenship, age, sex and resettlement framework

In March 2022, the European Commission activated the Temporary Protection Directive 2001/55/EC for people from Ukraine seeking refuge.

Temporary protection:

• Decisions granting temporary protection by citizenship, age and sex (also for unaccompanied minors);
• Beneficiaries of temporary protection at the end of the month by citizenship, age and sex (also for unaccompanied minors).

 See annex (Asylum Quality Report)

Asylum migration - international protection statistics

See annex

Statistics requested in the framework of this Regulation and within this data collection refer to persons; that is, family members as defined in Article 2(i) of Council Regulation 2003/343/EC must be counted individually. All accompanying family members shall be reported individually, irrespective of the national legal requirements or administrative procedures. Only the data on asylum applications withdrawn refer to the number of applications, however, it is understood that these data will also relate to the number of persons rather than cases.

See annex

Italy

See annex

2008-2023

Number of persons.

Calendar month, calendar quarter and calendar year.

The Ministry of Interior is the only authority responsible by law for the asylum procedure by law 286/25 July 28 and subsequent modifications.

See point 6.1

See the national statistics institute regulation and (EU) reg. 2017/712

Privacy e trattamento dei dati personali (istat.it)

EU and national statistics institute regulations are followed.

External users cannot access micro-data for research purposes, and, if so, confidentiality provisions are applied.

Procedure for ensuring confidentiality during collection, processing and dissemination, including rules for determining confidential cells:

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council and Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation).

Not available.

Yearly

I numeri dell'asilo | Dipartimento Libertà Civili e Immigrazione (interno.gov.it)

Public

The data are published yearly in the website of the Ministry of Interior. 

Daily updated is shared with the relevant stakeholders inside the Ministry.

The annual data are published on March for previous year.

Ad hoc requests could be sent to the national commission for asylum.

Publication only on the website of the Ministry of Interior website.

PDF file on Ministry of Interior website.

Not available

Not available.

Not available.

 None.

Not available.

None

Not available.

Not available.

Regular controls of data consistency and data cleansing.The data consistency is done on restricted inputs and severity of inconsistency; incompleteness; accuracy; precision; missing / unknown data.

Quality management of asylum data is part of quality management of the system of Istat (National Institute for statistics). ASYLUM statistics data processing is documented by several description schemes and procedures.

Quality management system used is ISO-benchmarking, quality reviews, self-assessments, compliance monitoring etc.

The reference terms for the assessment of quality compliance are provided by Eurostat in the ASYLUM statistics technical guidelines applied for the reference period.

Good.

The statistics collected under Regulation 862/2007 are used by a wide range of users at national, European and International level to cover the diversity of users' needs.

 Users of Asylum statistics: 

• Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Commission, for producing the official European Union statistics on Asylum
• EASO
• DG HOME AFFAIRS for designing, funding and implementing asylum related policies in the EU Parliament
• National authorities : Ministries of Interior, Ministries of Labour, Ministry of Foreign affairs, Ministry of Justice
• The European Migration Network (EMN) which uses the Asylum data as a basis for its annual statistical and analytical reports at EU and at national level
• Researchers and students conducting analysis and research in the field of asylum
• Journalists and international organisations in the area of asylum and migration

No information.

See annex

100%

The accuracy of the national Asylum statistics, at dataset level, is considered high for all requested tables.

Not applicable. In so far as there is no survey sampling in ASYLUM statistics.

Not applicable.

In relation to table A21, Italy cannot exclude resettled persons from this table. Unaccompanied minors are included only in a very limited number. Because the majority of centers for minors are managed by municipalities and it is not possible to contact all of the  7 901 centers to get the exact number of asylum seekers and refugees hosted there. No national data are available on unaccompanied minors asylum seekers and refugees in reception.

Table A16. Resettled persons by age, sex and citizenship: Italy includes refugees / asylum seekers arrived in Italy via the "Humanitarian Corridors" from TC. They will be considered "applicants" at their arrival. The majority of them will receive Refugees status at the end of the procedure. Few of them will receive Subsidiary protection.

The National Resettlement Programme implemented by the Italian Ministry of Interior, Department for civil liberties and immigration according to the commitments made in the JHA Council conclusions of 20 July 2015. The EU Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) fund the program. The program relies on UNHCR dossiers to identify beneficiaries already recognised as refugees.

The Humanitarian Corridors is a private sponsorship program implemented by the Community of Sant'Egidio, Evangelic Churches Federation in Italy and the Waldensian Church in Italy in cooperation with the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Therefore, as far as humanitarian corridors are concerned they have been reported as "other resettlement Framework". In such cases, the protection status granted to such persons is reported as “Unknown”, because scheme persons will undergo a refugee status determination procedure upon their arrival in Italy.

With regards to evacuation from Libya, while we do see some similarities between this procedure and humanitarian admission, it also appears that the evacuees do not receive a humanitarian visa before traveling and do not fall in the above definition of humanitarian corridor. Based on these two elements, we understand that the evacuation procedure is not nationally recognized as a humanitarian admission program. If so, then indeed such cases should not be reported included in the resettlement data.

Average lag (in days) of registering the following administrative events to the register/database from the day these events took place:

The event of the expression of intention of the applicant to apply for international protection is manually registered. Italy is working to include this data in the database related to asylum application. A new database is the inception phase.

The event of the lodging of an application for international protection: 10 days

The event of an issued first instance decision by the relevant first instance authorities: no lag

The event of an issued final instance decision by the relevant final instance authority: it depends on the local tribunal workload

Proportion of units (persons) reported in the statistics that do not belong to the target population:

100% of the target population for all tables.

Partial double counting between asylum applicants (tables A01 and A 18) and resettled (A16).

Not applicable.

See concept 13.3.4 Processing Error

Not applicable.

Not requested.

Not requested.

Potential errors:

• Reported variable (age, sex, citizenship, status withdrawn) erroneously processed (classified or edited) in the first place;
• Revisions in a variable are recorded with delays;
• Data on final decision are collected from the local tribunals and then notified to the territorial commission that will insert the data in the database (delay in the registration, merging data may be a source of error).

Not applicable.

See below

• Number of days (on average) after the end of the reference period at which the country is able to report the first/preliminary Asylum data, at the earliest;
• Asylum applicants by citizenship, age and sex - Monthly data 15 days;
• First time asylum applicants by citizenship, age and sex - Monthly data 15 days; 
• Persons subject of asylum applications pending at the end of the month by citizenship, age and sex 15 days; 
• Asylum applications withdrawn by citizenship, age and sex 30 days;
• First instance decisions on applications by citizenship, age and sex 15 days;
• Decisions withdrawing status granted at first instance decision by type of status withdrawn and by citizenship 30 days;
• Final decisions on applications by citizenship, age and sex 90 days;
• Decisions withdrawing status granted as final decision by type of status withdrawn 90 days;
• Resettled persons by age, sex and citizenship 15 days.

• 90 days for all monthly, quarterly and annual asylum tables
• 30 days for temporary protection

On time

On time

No differences with Eurostat definitions.

Not applicable.

See annex

Since 2008

No differences

For asylum applications, monthly data on unaccompanied minors (e.g. tables A01, A02, A18) are coherent in relation to the annual statistics on asylum applicants considered to be unaccompanied minors (table A10).

The age used for each dataset (monthly versus annual) is declared for monthly and assessed for annual.

The monthly statistics may overestimate the final number of Unaccompanied Minors by around 2%.

Not applicable.

The data on final decisions are collected in the same database but the information are sent with a big delay by tribunals of the country.

The data may not fully encompass all final decisions.

Not available.

1. Description of the national revision policy for Asylum statistics

No national revision policy. Data revision is on demand.

Data are checked monthly and revisions are provided if necessary.

2. The number of revisions planned on average (how often it is planned to revise the data)

 Annually or when necessary.

3. Description of the main reasons for revisions (e.g. new source data are becoming available, new methods/concepts, etc.)

 May occur in case of new legislations, new methods of counting.

None.

None.

National asylum commission

Police headquarters

Resettlement office 

Data on asylum are collected daily.

• an applicant may lodge an application at border or in a save and rescue ship;
• he/she is first fingerprinted for illegal entry on the same day;
• by 3 days the application is registered at the immigration office;
• by 10 days the application is registered in the database by the immigration police after the security/identification checks and give an appointment to the interview;
• at the same moment the territorial commissions for asylum receive all the application and documentation and start to prepare the interview, book an interpreter, etc.;
• all the relevant information on the asylum procedure are registered in the same database and all relevant stakeholders have a direct access;
• The data are extracted from our national asylum system in the current Eurostat-standard templates (csv format). Automated electronic extraction.

A. Description of the national workflow for checking and validating the source and output data and how the results of these validations are monitored and used.

Weekly check for double counting and correction of errors, if any. 

B. Validation procedures (checks) performed in the Asylum statistics in order to ensure the quality of the data.

Monthly checks and revisions if necessary.

The operations performed on data to derive new information according to a given set of rules is decided case by case.

No imputation rate.

Not applied.

None applied.