It is a young woman from Somalia, 22 years old, who has become a symbol of this conflict between Germany and Italy: like many other migrants, she first fled to Libya and then across the sea.
In March of this year she disembarked in Italy and then traveled on to Germany. According to the Italian media, she has family in Germany and has fled a forced marriage. Germany wants to transfer her to Italy. The background is the so-called Dublin Regulation. This means that every refugee must apply for asylum in the EU country he or she first entered.
If that doesn't happen and people apply for asylum somewhere else, they can be sent back to the first country of entry. But Italy does not want to take back the young Somali woman and other asylum seekers.
The whole issue has two levels, says Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi in an interview with the media company Mediaset. On the one hand it is about enforcing European rules, on the other hand it is about protecting national interests. There are these discrepancies in between.
In the interview, Piantedosi also talks about an agreement with Germany on the subject of Dublin cases, about a kind of "legacy case regulation" that also includes people like the Somali woman.
Italy has not taken back any of the so-called Dublin cases since 2022, on the grounds that the Italian reception system is completely overloaded. This year, in June, the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) was introduced - a controversial reform that aims, among other things, to distribute the burden of migration more fairly across the EU.
Christopher Hein, professor of migration and asylum law at Luiss University in Rome, says that for the time before CEAS, Italy and Germany had a political agreement - the "legacy regulation" mentioned by Piantedosi. Since mid-June, when CEAS came into force, Italy has been withdrawing Dublin cases again.
But as is often the case, the devil is in the details: Italy and Germany have different views on whether Italy has to take over Dublin cases that are already in Germany from mid-June. Or whether Italy only has to take back the migrants who enter the EU via Italy from mid-June. The Somali woman is just such a controversial case; she entered the country in March but should now be transferred to Italy.
For asylum law professor Hein, these are subtleties - and a sad story for a common European asylum policy.
Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini from the right-wing Lega, like others in the government, is now demanding compensation from Germany - for the migrants who rescue private sea rescue ships flying the German flag from the sea and bring them to Italy.
Germany should stop the sea rescue ships run by German NGOs that mistook Italy for a refugee camp, demands Salvini.
For Christopher Hein, sea rescue and Dublin cases have little to do with each other. He believes it is absolutely inadmissible to mix saving human lives with aspects of asylum law.
At the same time, Germany is an important partner for Italy, especially in the area of migration. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Chancellor Friedrich Merz also get along well personally. And so the Italian Interior Minister Piantedosi also emphasizes that there is excellent cooperation with Germany.
In response to a request from ARD, the German Interior Ministry also writes that Germany and Italy work closely and trustingly together on migration policy issues. The votes on the implementation of the European asylum reform took place in an open and cooperative exchange. The conflict seems to be extremely inconvenient for both sides. So why doesn't anyone give in?
Andrea de Petris is the scientific director of the Centro Politiche Europee in Rome. For him, this is due to the upcoming elections: in Italy the parliament will be elected next year, in Germany there are state elections in the fall. Both Merz and Meloni feared that parties like the AfD and Roberto Vannacci's Italian ultra-right splinter party would deny them votes, says de Petris.
Both heads of government demonstrated a tough stance on migration policy, seeing it exclusively from the perspective of national interests, in order to try not to lose any votes to Vannacci or the AfD.
How effective this strategy is remains to be seen, says de Petris. However, polls in Germany and Italy show that both the AfD and Vannacci's party are on the rise. Therefore, de Petris believes, plunging relations between Berlin and Rome into a crisis in response to these tensions may not be the best move.
In any case, the young woman from Somalia, who became a symbol of these tensions, has now been taken into protection in a church asylum in Nuremberg, according to the church refugee aid organization Matteo.
It is unlikely that she will be transferred back to Italy for the time being. But this does not solve the conflict - there are other migrants for whom Italy and Germany are arguing about who is responsible for their asylum application.
