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More than 20,000 people marched through Parma on Saturday against a rally for "remigration" — the forced return of migrants — dwarfing the roughly 2,000 people who turned out for the march itself, police said. The counter-march, joined by the city's mayor, Michele Guerra, filled the city centre from piazzale Santa Croce to piazzale della Pace, beneath the monument to the Partisan, while the rally it opposed — organised by the Remigration and Reconquest Committee, an alliance including CasaPound, the Rete dei Patrioti and the Veneto Fronte Skinheads — walked a separate, police-guarded route from Ponte Europa toward the station.
The marches were the most visible test yet of a citizens' bill that would write remigration into Italian law — immediate expulsion for illegal migrants, a state-run voluntary-returns pact, a new Institute of Remigration and tighter rules for rescue ships in the Mediterranean — after campaigners collected more than 150,000 signatures and deposited the text at the Chamber of Deputies on June 30. For the bill's supporters, Saturday was a show of strength for a proposal that has no seats in parliament; for its opponents, the ten-to-one crowd was proof the city rejects it. The bill now waits on signature verification and a parliamentary committee's decision on whether it is debated at all.
Guerra marched with the counter-protest and called it a "strong signal", La Repubblica reported. "When fascists come to our city, you have to take to the streets," he said from the stage, according to the CGIL union's news site Collettiva, which put the counter-march at more than 15,000 by the organisers' own count. He called the remigration rally itself "horrendous", Corriere di Bologna reported.
The Remigration and Reconquest Committee says its proposal answers a demand Italians have already made in writing. After depositing the signatures, the committee's president, Luca Marsella, said the campaign had entered parliament "with our faces and 150,000 signatures", Brussels Signal reported. The text runs to 24 articles across six chapters, and the signatures were collected over about six months. The committee also held a march in Rome in mid-June that organisers said drew more than 10,000 people, though the AFP news agency put the figure at about 3,000.
The figures also correct a claim that circulated online on Saturday, which presented the 150,000 signatures as people who had taken to the streets. The 150,000 is the number of signatures gathered over about six months for the citizens' initiative, not the size of Saturday's march — police put the remigration march itself at between 1,500 and 2,000 people, while the counter-march drew more than 20,000, ANSA and Il Fatto Quotidiano reported.
Police kept the two marches apart under a security plan drawn up for the day. The remigration march ended with the singing of "Faccetta nera" and Roman salutes, Corriere di Bologna reported, while the counter-march sang "Bella Ciao" on its way to the Partisan monument. From the counter-march stage, CGIL Parma's general secretary, Lisa Gattini, called the bill "fascist, racist and unconstitutional". "Remigration is a word that hides the word deportation," she said.
The bill's text goes beyond illegal migration: Brussels Signal reported it would also cover foreign nationals convicted of crimes and, in some cases, Italian citizens of foreign origin who commit serious offences or are considered insufficiently integrated. The campaign's organisers acknowledge that the Meloni government has already cut irregular arrivals — 14,372 by June 30, down from 30,060 in the same period a year earlier, according to interior ministry figures carried by Brussels Signal — but say the law is needed to go further.
The signatures are now being verified, and the bill will go to the relevant parliamentary committee, which will examine the text before deciding whether to send it to the Chamber of Deputies for debate. The committee says its campaign continues. The counter-march organisers say Parma has shown where the city stands.