Italy’s far-right prime minister has said she will not allow the country to become “Europe’s refugee camp”, after thousands of people seeking refuge landed on its shores, prompting France to tighten controls at its border with Italy.
Giorgia Meloni told the UN general assembly in New York that the huge numbers arriving in Lampedusa, a tiny Sicilian island that for years has been the first port of call for people crossing a perilous stretch of the Mediterranean Sea from north Africa, had placed Italy “under incredible pressure”.
Lampedusa has once again become Europe’s immigration flashpoint after more than 11,000 people arrived within the last week, while almost 500 people rescued by an NGO ship were brought to Brindisi in Puglia on Tuesday, bringing the number landing in Italy so far this year to over 127,000 – more than double that of the same period in 2022.
The majority of refugees arriving in Lampedusa are transferred to overcrowded reception centres in Sicily. On Monday, hundreds escaped from a centre in Porto Empedocle in a desperate search for food.
Many people try to make their way north to the border with France, where for years French police have used ruthless tactics to make the border crossing impenetrable. France tightened controls on trains running between the Italian border town of Ventimiglia and Cannes in France as the number of arrivals surged in Lampedusa, but denied reports in the Italian press that it had deployed an “anti-terrorism” mission to stop people entering the country.
During a visit to Lampedusa on Sunday, Meloni, who took power last October vowing to stop illegal immigration, said “the future of Europe is at stake” unless EU countries worked together to come up with “serious solutions”.
Meloni was the key protagonist of a controversial £105m deal signed in July between the EU and Tunisia, from where the vast majority of people are setting off, to stem irregular migration. However, no money has yet changed hands and the number of people crossing to Italy has risen by almost 70% since the deal was signed.
Last week, a group of MEPs were refused entry to Tunisia, raising fresh concerns about the Tunisian president Kais Saied’s commitment to address concerns over human rights abuses. He has previously declared that Tunisia would not be Europe’s border guard.
Earlier this week, it emerged that EU member states had expressed “incomprehension” over the circumstances surrounding the Tunisia pact. In a letter, the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, said EU states had raised their concerns verbally and in writing in July but had not gone public because of the political sensitivity of the issue.
On Wednesday, the European commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement, Olivér Várhelyi, said the deal was a good one. “You can’t expect to break down the smugglers’ network in two months,” he told La Stampa in Italy.
Várhelyi said that fruits of the pact were beginning to emerge despite 114,000 arrivals in the first eight months of the year. “In 2022 the Tunisian coastguard intercepted 9,376 migrants, this year we are already at 24,000. Last year, they also rescued 32,459 people at sea, and this year already 50,000. They more than doubled their efforts but unfortunately the traffickers quadrupled them or even more,” he said.
Meloni also rejected criticism of the deal, telling the UN assembly that “it is a model to use with other nations too”.
Italy and the EU have a similar deal with Libya, where people have reported severe human rights abuses in detention camps, including being beaten, tortured and raped. Others have reported murder in the camps and, as one young man from Sudan told the Guardian in Lampedusa, people dying of disease and hunger.
The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who accompanied Meloni during the visit to Lampedusa, where they both pledged the swift deportation of those turned down for asylum, urged EU member states to make use of a mechanism enabling them to voluntarily take in migrants to help ease the burden on Italy.
But none have so far been forthcoming, with the French interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, saying on Tuesday that while France was ready to assist with deporting people to their countries of origin, it “will not welcome” people arriving in Lampedusa.
Meloni has criticised the EU’s redistribution policy, saying on Sunday that immigration would “never be resolved by talking only about redistribution” and that the only way to resolve the issue was “to stop departures”.
More than 2,000 people have died in the central Mediterranean while trying to cross to Europe so far this year, according to the International Organization for Migration. In late February, 98 people died in a shipwreck off a beach in the southern Italian region of Calabria. Two babies died last week during a crossing to Lampedusa.
Ten years after Pope Francis made a landmark visit to Lampedusa to show solidarity with migrants, he will join Catholic bishops from the Mediterranean this weekend in the French city of Marseille to make the call more united. Francis’ overnight visit was scheduled months ago, but has been made more timely by recent developments.
