Italy’s Meloni Scorches France’s Macron Over Immigration

European leaders could have a lively meeting next week at Prague. In a freshly unearthed video that pre-dates her rise to be Italy’s next premier, firebrand Giorgia Meloni laces into Emmanuel Macron with gusto, accusing the French president of authoring Western Europe’s migrant crisis. The strong showing of Ms. Meloni’s anti-immigrant Brothers of Italy party in recent national elections makes her the frontrunner for Italy’s next prime minister, a role she is expected to assume as soon as this month at Rome.In a video from 2018 presently making the rounds of the European press, Ms. Meloni lobs multiple rounds of vitriol at Mr. Macron, saying that with respect to attitudes on illegal immigration the French president had described Italians as “disgusting, cynics, and irreponsible.”“We will not accept lessons from you, is that clear?” she sputters.Plus, Ms. Meloni had some lessons of her own to give. In the video, Ms. Meloni tells her supporters that what’s “disgusting” is a “France that continues to exploit Africa by printing money to 14 African countries, charging them mint fees, and by child labor in the mines and by extracting raw material, as is happening in Niger,” where “France extracts 30 percent of the uranium it needs to run its nuclear reactors, while 90 percent of Niger’s population lives without electricity.” There was more. “Do not come to teach us lessons, Macron, the Africans are abandoning their continent because of you,” Ms. Meloni thundered, adding, “The solution is not to transfer Africans to Europe, but liberate Africa from some Europeans.”While her detractors might criticize Ms. Meloni’s remarks (and delivery) as slightly bombastic, her tirade is prescient. For one thing, France’s former colonies in Africa have been ditching Paris right and left.As the Sun has previously reported, Gabon and Togo, both formerly French possessions, joined the Commonwealth of Nations as the British association’s 55th and 56th members. This weekend, the French Embassy in Burkina Faso was under attack by protestors who accused the Quai d’Orsay of harboring the former French colony’s ousted president. Mr. Macron has problems of his own. Following his less than triumphant reelection, he failed to win control of the French parliament, jeopardizing his legislative aims. On the international stage, his attempts to rein in Vladimir Putin’s attacks on Ukraine flopped spectacularly, whereas Ms. Meloni has been a staunch and vocal supporter of Kyiv at all times. Britain’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, said during her campaign that “the jury is still out” on whether Mr. Macron was “friend or foe.”Both Ms. Truss and Mr. Macron are planning to attend a meeting of European political leaders at Prague next week, and that could make for quite a rendezvous. It was not immediately clear if Ms. Meloni will be in attendance as well. It is clear that she is rarely at a loss of words.Especially when it comes to the issue of illegal immigration and Italy, which on this issue is on the frontlines. In another part of the resurfaced video Ms. Meloni scolded Mr. Macron over France’s previous interventions in Libya, accusing Paris of elbowing Italy over energy concessions in the process, which she said, to raucous applause, “left us with the chaos of illegal immigration that we are facing now.”France has had some problems with migrants who use the port of Calais as a staging ground to cross the English Channel, but in Europe the herculean task of managing the flow of migrants arriving literally by the boatload via the Mediterranean Sea has fallen mainly to Greece and Italy. Ms. Meloni’s ire reflects the exasperation of the Italian electorate that propelled her to power. That prospect has clearly rattled cages at Paris, where plain-speaking is often seen as something closer to a vice than to a virtue. The Elysée Palace said that it “respects the democratic choice” of Italians. Go ahead and ask Ms. Meloni if she gives a hoot what the French think — just brace yourself for the answer.

Italy’s Meloni Scorches France’s Macron Over Immigration

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