The urgency of migrant landings on the Italian coasts agitates the majority in power in Italy. It is the League that continues to raise its voice, contesting the approach followed so far by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, particularly in the relationship with Tunisia. (Illustration: Will the ruling right-wing coalition made up of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia and Matteo Salvini’s League last much longer?)
A Council of Ministers is scheduled for Monday morning and we cannot exclude that the new package of security measures announced in recent days by Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and Matteo Salvini, Deputy Prime Minister, arrives on the table. “There are many ways to block, reduce a flow: extreme remedies for extreme ills,” said the far-right leader, invoking “an expulsion center in each region”.
Towards more rigid attitudes
Salvini says he is increasingly convinced that “an attack on Italy” is underway and that “we must act alone given that Europe is clearly absent, distant, ignorant and deaf”. “It is only here,” he accuses, “ that these figures exist (number of landings of irregular migrants, Editor’s note), not in Spain, France, Malta, Greece or elsewhere. ” He adds, accusingly: “There are German institutions which give millions of euros to German NGOs to bring migrants to Italy. It is a fact.” And to pull the blanket towards him, dissociating himself from his ally Meloni as he passes:“When I was minister, the landings were less than a tenth of those we are seeing. And it is not a hazard”.
The theme of security and migrants has always been a central point in the propaganda of Salvini’s party and, in view of the next European elections, it will also be a crucial subject in the coming months in the internal debate within the majority itself. And although the leader of the League tries to calm the controversy by specifying that “the government is working together on a new decree on security, without any differentiation and with respect for the work of everyone” , the deputy secretary of the League, Andrea Crippa, goes even further by launching:“We have to go back to what Salvini did when he was interior minister. He showed that problems can be solved with more rigid attitudes. I am not only talking about the reinstatement of the Salvini decrees of 2018 but also about an attitude that must be sharper.
The Ministry of the Interior is obviously also responsible for the landings at Lampedusa. It is no coincidence that Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi also acts by speaking on the telephone with European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson: “We shared the need to develop a new European operational strategy against drug traffickers. ‘Human being. And to strengthen repatriations from Tunisia to countries of origin.
Barefoot or with worn socks
“Italy has remained in a solitude populated by hypocrites, I am referring to the European context, because in difficult times, everyone turns their backs,” declared for his part the Minister of Civil Protection, Nello Musumeci, on the sidelines of the first forum on marine resources in Trieste. “I hope that Europe will finally understand that the migratory phenomenon cannot be contained in the indifference of many, it must be addressed, and not only by the European Union,” he added .“In Lampedusa, we have done everything possible, and what we have always supported is proposed again: the problem is not having to save a man at sea, which must be done always, in all cases and everywhere, but the problem is that we must not let the boats and boats approach the smugglers’ mafia. “We need hundreds of thousands of workers in Italy but they must arrive legally, through flows predetermined by the member states,” adds Musumeci. Sicily “being the first strip of land in Europe in the Mediterranean, is the one which suffers the most from this tragedy which puts in difficulty not only the structures of the State but also the local communities”, he concluded.
Barefoot or with worn socks, they wander through the houses of Lampedusa, asking with gestures for food. They are mostly boys, a few minors, and they do the same in the bars in the center, fixing their gaze on the counters of the rotisseries in the city center. I hope a compassionate customer decides to buy something from them. The generosity of the islanders is working to alleviate hunger, starting with the family of firefighter Antonello Di Malta, with mother Teresa, 84, in the kitchen preparing pasta for two groups of teenagers who filled her canteen last night and today at lunch. It didn’t take much for the Lampedusa firefighter to change his plans: “I was supposed to go to dinner with friends, but in front of the door I found young people from Burkina Faso asking for food. One of them even got down on his knees.’”
Schlein for “a European Mare Nostrum”
“The drama of these days, we should say of these years, in Lampedusa is the demonstration of the failure of the outsourcing policy of this government. Landings increased by 60% despite the cynical attempt to reach an agreement with a country that does not guarantee democratic rights,” said Democratic Party Secretary Elly Schlein. And to add: “We have seen the failure of Giorgia Meloni’s mediation with her Hungarian and Polish nationalist allies and not a single protest for the lack of solidarity at the reception, but she even says that they are right. We will continue to fight for a fair sharing of responsibilities. We are welcome among all European countries, as the Democratic Party has always done to open legal and safe access routes and humanitarian corridors for all European countries so that Italy and Lampedusa are not left alone. ”
Stopping the arrivals of migrants “is happening” with “a European mission, including naval if necessary, in agreement with the North African authorities, to stop the departures of boats,” declared, for her part, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in a video broadcast by Palazzo Chigi on migrants.
We must then “check in Africa who has or does not have the right to asylum, welcome into the EU only those who are actually entitled to it according to international conventions and at the same time work on serious investments in development”, he said . she added, thus expressing a real desire to externalize European borders and create sorting centers in the south of the Mediterranean.
