As European Leaders Descend on Granada, Italy’s Meloni Gets No Respite From Migrant Crisis

When 47 heads of state and government converge at Granada this Thursday for the third meeting of the so-called European Political Community, expect no Hail Mary on illegal immigration from President Macron, the man who conceived the parley as a way to foster cooperation over canapés and Instagram-worthy scenery. The leader most in need of such a pass is Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who campaigned on securing Italy’s borders but is now staring down a crisis so large it risks, in time, toppling her own government. Not that Mr. Macron would be happy to see a thing like that happen. Ms. Meloni’s management of Europe’s migrant crisis — of which Italy is the frontline nation — is linked to long-term political survival, and she knows it. In a new social media post, the right-wing Italian premier makes it abundantly clear that with the situation spiraling out of control she will not be able to go it alone: Her government, she stated, is “seriously, at every level, asking for the participation of other European states in the entire effort and signing agreements with African countries, in order to stop the departures of the people smugglers and to dismantle the network of human traffickers, but also with common sense measures to favor the deportations of those not entitled to stay in Italy.”On the one hand, other EU countries like France and Poland are growing reluctant to take in refugees who come via Italy. Couple that with inaction from Brussels and it means the pressure is on for Ms. Meloni to carve out a space in which Europe as a whole can lean on countries like Tunisia and Libya to stop the outward flow of people.Yet the smuggling networks are entrenched, their operators savvy, and Europeans across the political spectrum consistently underestimate the depths of human desperation that is fueling the illicit trade in humans across the Mediterranean. A naval blockade, which Ms. Meloni has suggested, might help but in practice it would be exceedingly difficult to execute — beyond that, the dominant progressive leanings at Brussels would likely sink such a plan before it even left the blueprint phase.In the meantime, the magnitude of the problem, as demonstrated last month when thousands of migrants overwhelmed the Italian island of Lampedusa, is creating fractures within the Italian political establishment. That is a major headache for Mme. Meloni. The prime minister indicated as such in another statement that her job “becomes more difficult if in the meantime other countries are working in the diametrically opposite direction and if even a part of Italy is doing everything possible to favor illegal immigration.” And, she adds, “I’m not just talking about the ideological left and the circuit that has its own vested interests in [migrant] reception.”That was partly a rebuke of Italian judges who refuse to order the detention of some refugees who arrived in Sicily and should have been repatriated in accordance with the government’s most recent measures. Ms. Meloni accused them of politicizing the issue and working against Italy’s efforts to regulate migration flows.“I was stunned by the judge’s decision, which released an illegal immigrant who had already received a deportation order, unilaterally declared Tunisia an unsafe country and opposed the measures of a democratically elected government,” Ms. Meloni said. That was a reference to the ruling that concerned the risk of returning to Tunisia to be recruited to work in gold mines.Ms. Melon’s exasperation triggered more outcry. The head of the national magistrates association called the prime minister’s words “wrong in tone and content and not in keeping with the relationship between the judiciary and the executive.” The head of the left-wing Democratic Party, Elly Schlein, said that Ms. Meloni was fueling an “institutional clash” that risks harming Italy. Migrant arrivals to Italy have more than tripled from last year, so it is no surprise that it is the defining issue in the country right now. The deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, has previously said that “[George] Soros wants to fill Italy and Europe with migrants” and that he “would like Italy [to become] a giant refugee camp.”Representatives of Ms. Meloni’s ruling coalition, Fratelli d’Italia, Lega, and Forza Italia, have repeatedly suggested that external factors are trying to undermine the government’s action, including by encouraging the wave of migration and preventing agreements on common solutions at EU level, as well as by destabilizing markets and frightening investors.In a recent Italian interview, Ms. Meloni denied rumors that her government could fall and clear the way for a technocrat government similar to the one that in 2011 was led by Mario Monti, a politician and economist with close ties to European institutions. She stated that she “will definitely not fall because of a conspiracy.What happened to others before me will not happen to me” — a reference to Prime Minister Berlusconi, whose fourth government fell in November 2011 amid a debt crisis, with Mr. Monti taking the reins at Rome. In a robust bid to tamp down speculation that history could soon repeat itself in the world’s eighth-largest economy, Ms. Meloni stated, “The left can continue to create a list of ministers of a technocratic government, meanwhile we will continue to govern the country.”

As European Leaders Descend on Granada, Italy’s Meloni Gets No Respite From Migrant Crisis

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