Italy and France: The pulse for immigration policy. Who is right and how will this affect the EU?

All this happens at a very sensitive moment for the 27s, when the far-right government of Giorgia Meloni came to power with the new government. European nationalist powers on the riseEmphasize the “migrant occupation” discourse to attract election revenue. There are already fears that Meloni will try to use this issue to trigger a major conflict within the EU.

European solidarity

France claims that Italy ignores European solidarity. In simple words, this is, in these years, Brussels paid Italy As it is one of the countries with the most exposure geographically migration from Africa, thus responsible for managing the phenomenon. In particular, Italy benefited from European assistance. EUR 1,044 million from 2015 to 2021. The data this newspaper show analyzes is a figure that has grown over the years and comes primarily from two funds: the Asylum, Immigration and Integration Fund and the Homeland Security Fund.

that’s why rCriticism of the French Minister of the Interior, Gerald Darmanin, Announcing France’s decision to take 234 immigrants into the country ocean viking, attacked Italy in a bureaucratic but harsh language. He said Italy ignored “European solidarity and commitments”. “It can have very powerful consequences” in a bilateral relationship [entre Francia e Italia] and in the relationship between the EU and the Italian government”.

Possible isolation of Italy

The current crisis could lead to Italy’s isolation within the EU. darmanin put Italy’s aid from Brussels is discussed. In addition, even the French minister explained A possible meeting of France, Germany and the European Commission“Everything has to be arranged differently now so that Italy cannot be selfish and benefit from solidarity,” he said.

Other retaliations announced by France were the threat to suspend its participation in France. immigrant resettlement program Arrival in Italy and dispatch of 500 agents to the transalpine country border. Paris also asked Germany to take its side. Still, we’ll have to wait to find out about Italy’s diplomatic steps. Will have to figure out if France wants to fulfill with your threats or if it’s an impromptu confrontation It will be resolved in the coming days. Antonio Tajani, the current Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and former President of the European Parliament, has been cited as one of the possible interlocutors in this crisis.

Meloni this Thursdayaggressive“, “incomprehensible“Y”disproportionate“France’s reaction. The Italian Prime Minister put on the table the number of immigrants his country welcomes compared to the neighboring country and insisted on demanding changes in European immigration policy. “I don’t think we need to argue. Always with France, Greece, Spain… The only common solution and I discussed it with Macron, Germany and the EU, is to defend the EU’s external borders, to prevent exits, to open centers,” he said.

Increase in immigrant inflows

According to figures from the Italian Ministry of the Interior, updated on Thursday, November 10, the transalpine country is 30,780 in 2020, 57,458 in 2021 and 89,826 so far in 2022. This means that the number has tripled in just three years. The data is similar to the data from the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which was updated to November 6 and Rome accepted a total of 86,810 migrants this year. three times more than in Spain (28,899) as well as Greece (13,719) than Malta (314) and Cyprus (3,516). thought-provoking data The road to Italy has grown In a year when the war in Ukraine aggravated the food crisis and the transalpine country held elections that brought the far right to power.

Even if Italy is not the first country in terms of number of refugees todayAccording to UNHCR and International Organization for Migration (IOM) data, Germany (232,000 people) is followed by France (82,000), the United Kingdom (83,000) and Spain (91,000).

stuck delivery mechanism

A real problem is distribution mechanism does not work European countries have agreed on the resettlement of immigrants taken by Italy. As Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi stated, only 13 countries have pledged to accept around 8,000 immigrants this year He came to Italy. And to date, only 117 of them have been relocated. In addition, Italy, along with others Med5 countries (including Spain)He stated that he did not participate in the stalled reform. Dublin Convention and due to the lack of progress in negotiations to improve the European Migration and Asylum Pact.

The role of NGOs

Why is the Italian Government blaming the ink on NGOs when they only rescued 16% of migrants? This big unknown, which raises other questions: Who is benefiting from this crisis? Why is Italy blowing up now? In fact, so far this year Southern European countries, total 126,408 immigrants by sea. A figure in line with other years and much lower than 1,032,408 2015 is the year of the last big wave that these countries received from land and sea.

That’s right, it’s Italy this year. Received immigrants from all African countries of the Central Mediterranean (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt), according to UNHCR data. However, only 16% of migrants were rescued by NGOs in the first six months of this year, a figure similar to 2021 (15.5%). The rest were rescued by ships of the Italian Government. and to a lesser extent, they reached the shores of Italy alone.