Italy’s cabinet approves the emergency security decree: five years for violent rioting, parents liable, and 500 troops for Milan

The answer from Rome arrived on Tuesday evening, in a cabinet room, after a weekend in which masked crowds, most of them minors, looted the centre of Milan around the Duomo for two days.\n\nThe extraordinary Council of Ministers, chaired by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, began its meeting at Palazzo Chigi almost an hour late and approved an emergency security decree built around the riots. Its centrepiece is a new offence of violent participation in unrest, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of 20,000 euros. Parents will be financially liable for damage caused by their minor children, a provision aimed squarely at the age profile of the Milan crowds: on Sunday alone, 271 people were taken to police stations in Milan, 220 of them minors. Preventive detention, the fermo, is extended to young people aged 14 to 17. The approval reports from Reuters and ANSA did not state the detention period the decree sets, and the gazette text that will settle it has not been published, as of October 20.\n\nThe military piece of the package is narrower than the one ministers discussed on Monday. Five hundred soldiers will be deployed in Milan until the end of 2026. But the proposal to give those soldiers judicial police powers, the authority to stop, identify and hold suspects like police officers, was taken out of the decree after objections from the Quirinale, the presidential palace, which had raised constitutional concerns about soldiers exercising police functions. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini had previewed the detention measure earlier in the day, putting the preventive holding period for minors at 12 hours in remarks ahead of the meeting; the approved text will show whether that figure survived.\n\nThe decree follows the pattern of Meloni’s four years in office, in which law and order packages have steadily added offences and penalties, a record Reuters reviewed on Tuesday, noting that the prison population has risen by more than 17 percent under her government. The Milan violence began when a lawful march of about 5,000 people on Saturday, under the banner Italia in Piazza, was broken away from by masked youths who looted luxury shops in the Duomo district. Damage in Milan was put at more than 500,000 euros from Saturday alone, and more than 1 million euros counting lost trade, both figures provisional. Mayor Sala toured the damaged shops on Monday with the retailers’ association Confcommercio.\n\nApproval by the cabinet is not yet law in force. The decree must be promulgated and published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale, and then converted by parliament within 60 days or it lapses. What changed on Tuesday is that the government has now committed its response in writing: the next riot in an Italian city will be policed, prosecuted and billed to parents under rules written in direct answer to Milan.