British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has met with his Italian counterpart, Giorgia Meloni, in Rome to discuss ways of tackling irregular immigration.
Before the meeting on Monday, the United Kingdom’s premier said he wanted to “understand” the “dramatic reduction” in migrant arrival numbers in Italy. The visit with the far-right Italian leader has attracted criticism from members of Starmer’s left-leaning Labour Party.
Starmer also visited a national immigration coordination centre with Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi.
Since Labour won elections in July, Starmer has promised to fight illegal immigration despite rejecting the previous Conservative government’s plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda.
His meeting with Meloni, who heads the far-right anti-immigration Brothers of Italy party, has sparked criticism.
Labour MP Kim Johnson told The Guardian newspaper it was “disturbing” to see Starmer “seeking to learn lessons from a neo-fascist government”.
Perilous
Johnson noted that the visit came shortly after the UK was rocked by far-right riots during which mosques and migrant accommodation centres were targeted.
The arrival of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in small boats from France remains a perilous issue for Britain’s political parties.
More than 22,000 people have made the dangerous crossing of the English Channel so far this year, a slight increase from the same period in 2023.
Several dozen have perished, including eight killed when a boat carrying about 60 people ran aground on rocks late on Saturday. The same day, 14 boats carrying 801 people reached Britain.
British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper defended the government’s decision to seek advice from Italy’s right-wing administration, telling the BBC that the government had “a moral imperative to make sure that we are pursuing the criminal gangs who are putting lives at risk”.
Offshore centres
Despite rejecting the Rwanda plan, Starmer has not ruled out arrangements that would see asylum claims processed offshore.
Italy reached an agreement with Albania in November to host two centres where people would be housed while their asylum claims are processed.
Those with rejected asylum claims would be sent back to their countries of origin whereas those with accepted applications will be granted entry into Italy.
Meloni’s government has also inked a deal with Tunisia, granting it aid in exchange for greater efforts to stop Italy-bound refugees who leave the North African country to cross the Mediterranean.
Rome has also renewed a deal with the internationally recognised Libyan government in Tripoli dating from 2017 under which it provides training and funding to the coastguard to stem departures of refugees and return to Libya those already at sea.
Human rights groups said the policy pushes thousands of refugees back to Libya to face torture and abuse under arbitrary detention.
While touring the migrant coordination centre, Starmer said it looked like the lower arrivals to Italy were due to “work that’s been done in some of the countries where people are coming from”.
“I’ve long believed, by the way, that prevention and stopping people travelling in the first place is one of the best ways to deal with this particular issue,” he said.
Since the start of the year, refugee arrivals to Italy by sea have dropped markedly, according to the Ministry of the Interior. From January 1 to September 13, 44,675 people arrived compared with 125,806 for the same period in 2023.
