Migrants wait at a port after arriving on the Italian island of Lampedusa, Monday, September 18, 2023. Italy introduced tough rules to deter migrants after record boat trips from North Africa to Lampedusa saw the country’s southernmost tip overwhelmed by new arrivals.
Zakaria Abdelkafi/AFP via Getty Images
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Zakaria Abdelkafi/AFP via Getty Images
Migrants wait at a port after arriving on the Italian island of Lampedusa, Monday, September 18, 2023. Italy introduced tough rules to deter migrants after record boat trips from North Africa to Lampedusa saw the country’s southernmost tip overwhelmed by new arrivals.
Zakaria Abdelkafi/AFP via Getty Images
ROME – Italy’s government approved new measures to crack down on migration on Monday after the southern island of Lampedusa was again flooded by a wave of arrivals and departures from Tunisia and the migration problem returned to the spotlight in Europe with talk of a naval blockade.
The measures approved by the government targeted migrants who do not qualify for asylum and are to be repatriated to their home countries. The government has extended the time these people can be detained to the EU maximum of 18 months. It also plans to increase the number of detention centers to hold them, as capacity has always been insufficient and many of those due to return home are able to head further north.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced “emergency measures” after Lampedusa, which is closer to Tunisia in North Africa than the Italian mainland, was overwhelmed by nearly 7,000 migrants a day last week, more than the island’s population. Italy is slowly offloading them by ferry to Sicily and other ports, but the arrivals have reignited tensions on the island and in political corridors, especially ahead of next year’s European Parliament elections.
Amid domestic and European political jockeying, the resurrected Meloni campaign is calling for a naval blockade of North Africa to prevent traffickers from launching their smuggling boats into the Mediterranean. Meloni was on hand in Tunis in June when the president of the European Commission signed a deal with the Tunisian government that promised economic aid in exchange for help preventing exodus.
A similar agreement was signed years ago with Libya, but human rights groups condemned it as a violation of international maritime law, insisting that Libya is not a safe port and that migrants intercepted by the Libyan coastguard are returned to detention centers where abuses occur. abundant.
Meloni visited Lampedusa on Sunday with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who took a hard line and encouraged Meloni’s supporters.
“We will decide who comes to the European Union and under what circumstances. Not the smugglers,” Von der Leyen said as she set out the 10-point plan, which included a pledge of support to prevent the departure of smugglers’ ships by establishing an “operational anti-smuggling partnership” with countries origin and transit.
The plan envisages a possible “working agreement between Tunisia and Frontex”, an EU border force with air and sea assets currently helping search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean, and a coordination task force within Europol.
The commission did not rule out the possibility that a naval blockade was being considered. “We have expressed support for exploring these options,” Commission spokeswoman Anitta Hipper said Monday.
As part of the agreement von der Leyen signed with Tunisia, the EU pledged to provide funding for equipment, training and technical support “to further improve the management of Tunisia’s borders”. For example, the funds help pay for the renovation of 17 vessels belonging to the Tunisian authorities.
The latest influx calls into question the unity within the EU, its member states and also within Meloni’s far-right-led government, especially with European elections looming. Some member states have protested the way von der Leyen pushed through the Tunisia plan, complaining they were not properly consulted.
But even in Italy it is controversial. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, head of the populist, right-wing League, has questioned the effectiveness of Meloni’s EU-Tunisia deal and on Sunday hosted French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen at the League’s annual gathering in northern Italy. Just a few days earlier, Le Pen’s niece and far-right politician Marion Marechal was in Lampedusa, blasting the French government’s response to the migration problem.
Emmanuel Macron’s French government has moved to the right on migration and security, with his interior minister Gerald Darmanin heading to Rome for talks on Monday. Before leaving, Darmanin said France would help Italy maintain its border to prevent people from arriving, but was not ready to accept the migrants who had arrived on Lampedusa in recent days.
”Things are getting very difficult on Lampedusa. That is why we should help our Italian friends. But people coming to our soil should not be given the message that they are welcome in our countries no matter what,” he said on France’s Europe-1 radio.
“Our will is to fully welcome those who should be welcomed, but we should absolutely send back those who have no reason to be in Europe,” he said, referring to people arriving from Ivory Coast, Guinea or the Gambia, adding that nothing was obvious . political reason to grant them asylum.
