Italian welfare barrier for refugees fails in Europe's top court

(CN) — A migrant who fled to Italy lost his welfare benefits over a 10-year residency rule, but Europe's top court ruled Thursday that the country cannot lock protected migrants out of aid simply because they have not lived there long enough.

KH, the applicant, arrived in Italy in 2011 after fleeing his home country and later received subsidiary protection status, a form of protection granted to people who may not qualify as refugees but still face serious danger if returned home. He settled in Italy, got a residence permit and eventually enrolled in the country's "citizens' income" program, a flagship anti-poverty measure launched in 2019 that combines welfare payments with job training, employment counseling and social integration programs.

Then the payments stopped. In 2021, Italy's national social security agency revoked the benefit after concluding KH had not met one of the program's strictest requirements: Applicants had to prove they had lived in Italy for at least 10 years, including the previous two without interruption. Authorities also demanded repayment of the money already paid out and blocked future installments.

KH challenged the decision in an Italian court, arguing the rule unfairly shut refugees and other protected migrants out of benefits European Union law says they should receive on equal terms with citizens. Judges in Bergamo, northern Italy, referred the dispute to the Court of Justice of the European Union, asking whether the residency requirement complied with EU regulations for people under international protection.

The Luxembourg-based court sided with KH. Judges said Italy's "citizens' income" program falls under EU equal-treatment protections not only because it provides financial support, but because it is tied directly to employment access and social integration.

"Member states are not only obliged to make available to beneficiaries of international protection, under equivalent conditions as nationals, counseling and training activities linked to employment and occupational integration, but they must also endeavor to facilitate the full access of such beneficiaries to those activities," the court wrote.

That undercut one of Italy's core arguments. Rome insisted the program was more than ordinary welfare and functioned as a broader labor-market integration system, making it reasonable to reserve access for people with stronger roots in the country.

EU judges rejected that distinction, saying countries cannot sidestep equal-treatment protections simply by bundling welfare together with employment and integration measures.

Judges also saw the residency rule as indirect discrimination. While the requirement formally applied to everyone, migrants and refugees were far less likely to satisfy it than Italian nationals, particularly people who had spent much of their lives outside Italy before receiving protection there.

Who gets welfare, who gets turned away and how long someone has to wait before belonging enough to qualify have become some of the hottest political fights in Europe's migration debate. Italy remained one of the European Union's biggest destinations for asylum-seekers in 2025, recording 126,600 first-time asylum applications, according to Eurostat, while reception systems across southern Europe continue facing overcrowding and funding pressure. Governments across the bloc have increasingly tied welfare access and residency rights to longer stays and stricter integration requirements.

Even so, the court made clear that countries cannot use long residency requirements to quietly narrow protections guaranteed under EU law.

The court also dismissed Italy's argument that the administrative and financial burden of the program justified stricter access rules. "Accepting the argument that the national legislature is entitled, in the light of the administrative and financial costs of the measure concerned, to limit access to that measure" would create an exception that EU lawmakers never approved, the judges said.

Pauline Melin, assistant professor of European law at Maastricht University, said the ruling continues a trend in which EU judges have become increasingly skeptical of residency rules that look neutral on paper but hit migrants much harder in reality. Refugees and protected migrants are naturally less likely than citizens to satisfy decadelong residency requirements, she said, making the Italian rule discriminatory in practice even if it formally applied to everyone.

Italy also stumbled on a basic legal issue, according to Melin. EU countries are allowed to limit some welfare benefits for people under subsidiary protection, but only if they clearly write those limits into national law first. Italy never formally did that. "Budgetary reasons cannot justify it if the member state has not transposed the derogation allowed by the said directive in its national law," she said.

Virginia Passalacqua, assistant professor of EU law at the University of Turin, said the fight in this case was also about who gets to define welfare protections in Europe. Before Thursday's ruling, she pointed to the advocate general's view that EU judges should rely on a common EU understanding of social assistance rather than a narrower interpretation developed by Italy's constitutional court. Thursday's judgment ultimately moved in that same direction.

"In my view, that was correct as it safeguarded the autonomy of EU law and the effective utilization of the equality clause in the directive," Passalacqua said.

Alberto Guariso, an immigration lawyer representing KH, said the ruling goes beyond an earlier decision by Italy's constitutional court, which had already struck down the original 10-year rule for EU citizens but allowed a reduced five-year residency requirement to remain in place. Europe's top court took a tougher approach for refugees and other protected migrants, he said, finding that residency requirements themselves conflict with EU equal-treatment protections.

The judgment could now affect a large number of pending cases in Italy involving migrants who were denied the benefit because they failed to satisfy either the old 10-year rule or the later five-year version, according to Guariso.

Italy's social security agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ruling cannot be appealed, leaving the court in Bergamo to apply Europe's top judges' interpretation and decide whether KH gets his benefits back.

Courthouse News reporter Eunseo Hong is based in the Netherlands.