The Security package, a bill just passed by the Council of Ministers, also contains a measure to combat extreme protests in which traffic is hindered: road blocking becomes a crime if certain conditions are met
As widely announced with various declarations in recent days, through various representatives of the Government and the majority, the road block crime within the Security package, the bill just approved by the Council of Ministers. To tell the truth, that crime partly already existed and, to be even more precise, in some cases it was not a crime but only an administrative offence. To understand what changes, therefore, we need to know how things were before.
ROAD BLOCK: AS IT WAS BEFORE
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In 1999, when many ecologists who block roads today were not even born, the D’Alema Government decriminalized road blocking, downgrading it to an administrative offence. In 2018 the then Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, reintroduced the crime but only for those who blocked the streets with objects. For example with a tractor, a car, a dumpster, a barricade. However, the act of blocking free movement with one’s body remained a civil offense, as activists do today to protest against climate change.
ROAD BLOCK: WHAT CHANGES
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The Security package changes the issue once again. First of all, the administrative offense is also extended to those who block them railways. Then It also becomes a crime to block roads with your body and not only with objects, but only “in the moment in which it appears particularly offensive and alarmingboth due to the presence of more people and the fact that it was promoted and organized in advance”. In practice, if just one person, independently and for personal reasons, takes to the street and blocks traffic, then he does not commit a crime. But all it takes is two people who have agreed to make the blockade together and the criminal offense is triggered.
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