Italy’s Meloni cracks down on migration crisis

Italy’s Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, today launched a crackdown on migration, introducing new measures giving authorities the power to hold migrants for as long as 18 months and ordering the construction of new centres to house them.

Meloni’s tough reforms come after the Italian island of Lampedusa was overwhelmed with more than 11,000 migrants arriving over a few days, causing chaos and clashes with the authorities. Her new measures – which should also allow the Italian authorities to send more migrants home – follow on from her emergency visit to the island on Sunday accompanied by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Union.  The island sits 61 miles off the coast of Tunisia and has a population of 6,000. The migrant centre has a capacity of 400 so the island was completely overtaken by the sheer volume of migrants arriving from the North African coast.   

By the time von der Leyen and Meloni arrived, the litter-strewn streets leading to the migrant centre had been cleaned and most of the migrants had been moved to larger facilities in Sicily and the mainland. 

In a rare move, von der Leyen supported Italy’s tough approach to solving the migrant crisis. The EU president unveiled a 10-point-plan at a joint press conference, telling the residents of Lampedusa that the plan was a “European solution to a European challenge.” “You can count on the European Union,” she said. In another sign of how seriously Italy’s neighbours are taking the crisis, President Macron today sent his interior minister to Rome to offer French support for Meloni’s attempts to stem the flood of migrants coming into the country.

Indeed, Gérald Darmanin said that Macron had told him to “deliver a message of firmness” to Meloni in helping Italy secure its sea frontier after so many migrants had landed in Lampedusa.  

Some in the Italian government have called for a naval blockade to stop the crisis. The Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini called the huge rise in activity in the people smuggling trade “an act of war”.

“If we go on at 6,000 migrants a day, it means the fall of Italian society…What is happening in Lampedusa is the death of Europe.”  

Meloni was also unwavering in her message: “The future of Europe depends on its ability to face great challenges.” She said that solving illegal migration “should not be considered” Italy’s responsibility alone, “but the responsibility of Europe to itself.”

Today’s law change means that migrants can be detained by the Italian authorities for up to 18 months, an increase from the previous limit of three months. Due to the surge in numbers, it usually takes longer than three months for a migrant’s asylum application to be processed. This means that, as the think tank Openpolis confirms, only 20 per cent of intended repatriations actually take place. The hope is that, since many migrants are economic migrants and so not eligible for asylum, longer detention times will allow for more deportations.

However, even if more repatriations are processed, bilateral relations are strained and many countries do not want to take back migrants. There are also problems with migrants escaping from detention centres and heading for Northern European countries.  

The extended detention times will be combined with a pledge to build more detention centres in sparsely populated areas of the country. This will not be a popular domestic policy. 

But von der Leyen’s emergency visit and Macron’s involvement indicates the scale of the problem. It is not just Italy’s problem even if it is taking the initial blow. According to Italian government data, 127,000 migrants entered the country in the first half of this year – more than double the previous year. There are no figures on where these 127,000 migrants settled, but for many of them, Italy is not their final destination. 

Von der Leyen is right to call it a European problem. But the problem is bigger than just the number of migrants. What is also Europe’s problem, whether Europeans like it or not, is the instability from which migrants are fleeing.

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