As More Migrant Unease Grips Italy, All Eyes Are on Giorgia Meloni

The new Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who ran on a campaign of firm opposition to illegal immigration, will face her first major international test as more migrant ships from the Mediterranean Sea pull into her country’s ports — or do not, as the case may be. According to an Italian television station owned by Silvio Berlusconi, who is also one of Ms. Meloni’s coalition partners, Rome is set to ban the entry into Italian territorial waters of two ships that belong to non-governmental organizations and reportedly are carrying a combined estimated total of 380 migrants and refugees rescued from the Mediterranean Sea. Italy’s new interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, in a statement said the conduct of the ships, the Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking, operated by the group SOS Mediterranée, and the German-flagged Humanity One, is “not in line with Italian and European rules in terms of security, border control, and the fight against illegal immigration.” Italian press on Thursday reported that the Italian interior ministry’s directive, which is not yet binding, was conveyed to the Norwegian and German embassies and that the Meloni government is considering an entry ban.As of Thursday the two ships were reportedly somewhere near the Italian coast in the Adriatic Sea, ostensibly in international waters. The situation risks a repeat of the Aquarius ship incident in June 2018, when Italy refused port access to another rescue ship operated by SOS Mediterranée that had 629 migrants on board. The ensuing crisis became a highly charged political issue when France criticized Italy’s approach to the problem of illegal immigration.The migrants on the Aquarius, who eventually disembarked in Spain, had been rescued from Italian territorial waters. The exact location from which the refugees aboard the pair of rescue vessels were rescued recently was not immediately clear, but the Guardian reported that “most left Libya on small boats.” In a tweet, SOS Mediterranée said that some refugees were evacuated from a boat “unfit for high seas” in international waters off the coast of Malta.Ms. Meloni has previously said Italy should “repatriate migrants back to their countries and then sink the boats that rescued them,” but in her first speech to the Italian parliament on Tuesday she struck a more conciliatory tone, suggesting that putting a halt to illegal departures from countries such as Libya would be the most effective way of “breaking up the trafficking of human beings in the Mediterranean.”In a separate incident on Wednesday night, the Italian coast guard rescued more than a thousand migrants from a pair of fishing boats plying international waters off the coast of Sicily. The boats had also left from Libya, and both an Italian coast guard ship and a Spanish patrol ship helped in the rescue effort. Because an Italian vessel was involved, those refugees will be brought to an Italian port. How Ms. Meloni intends to tackle the multifaceted crisis remains to be seen. Her junior coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, faces a trial in Sicily for his alleged illegal blocking of a migrant boat from docking in Italy in 2019. Mr. Salvini is now serving as the infrastructure minister, so it will be for Mr. Piantedosi to follow through on his directive to the vessels still at sea. Yet Ms. Meloni now calls the policy shots, and from Paris to Athens, European leaders will be following closely her response to the latest migrant developments.London could be watching too, because Europe’s crisis of illegal immigration is not limited to countries along the continent’s southern periphery like Greece and Italy. The Times of London reported on Thursday that Britain’s borders are being “overwhelmed” by the number of migrant crossings from France across the English Channel, and that as many as 10,000 Albanian men had arrived in small boats this year. According to a “clandestine Channel threat commander for Border Force” quoted by the newspaper, that adds up to 2 percent of the adult male population of Albania.

As More Migrant Unease Grips Italy, All Eyes Are on Giorgia Meloni

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