Kinsa Case
The case centers on the trial of O.B., a woman who arrived at Bologna airport in 2019 with daughter and niece, using false passports to seek protection. Charged with "smuggling" she faced up to five years in prison.
A single case has triggered one of the most far-reaching challenges to European (anti)migration laws to date.
O.B., a Congolese woman, who arrived at Bologna airport in August 2019 accompanied by her 8-year-old daughter and 13-year-old niece, using false passports to travel to Italy to seek protection. O.B. faces charges of facilitating the unauthorized immigration of the two girls, facing up to five years imprisonment.
O.B.'s lawyer, Francesca Cancellaro, identified a violation of a wide range of her client's fundamental rights. Hence, in the course of legal proceedings in Bologna, she submitted a referall request for a preliminary ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) to examine the EU legal framework mandating member states to criminalize the facilitation of unauthorized immigration (the ‘Facilitators Package’), assessing its compatibility with the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (CFR). The presiding judge at the Court of Bologna accepted the submission and referred the matter to the CJEU. The outcome could have far-reaching implications for both EU and national legal frameworks. It could lead to a reassessment of national laws across the EU and impact hundreds of ongoing ‘facilitation’ cases as well as sentences in past cases.
This is a historic moment, in which a juridical body of the European Union has the opportunity to mend a contradiction that has gone on for far too long, a contradiction that – as we have pointed out for years, alongside a growing number of politicians and civil society organizations – has disrupted, and often even destroyed, the lives of thousands of people.
The Website Kinsa.eu offers access to relevant documents, studies, and legal texts scrutinizing the merits of the case as well as the 'facilitation laws' in the EU. Uncover critiques, consequences, voices from affected individuals, lawyers, researchers, activists, and organizations.
Update: the ruling
On 18 June 2024, the Grand Chamber of the CJEU heard the case (C-460/23); on 3 June 2025, it delivered its judgment, a landmark: the Court made clear that EU anti-smuggling legislation must not violate fundamental rights. The criminalisation of "facilitation" ends where people act for humanitarian reasons, or simply as a family: a mother bringing her own child across a border is not a smuggler.
For O.B., the ruling meant the end of proceedings that had lasted more than five years: an Italian court subsequently threw out all charges against her.
The significance of the case reaches far beyond the individual. The judgment sets the standard against which national "facilitation" laws across the EU must now be measured, including Article 12 of Italy's immigration law, the very provision on which the charges against the Iuventa crew were based. And it lands in the middle of the ongoing reform of the EU Facilitators Package: the Commission can no longer ignore the fundamental-rights limits the CJEU has drawn.