Macron meets Meloni in Rome amid tensions over migration | EUROtoday

Issued on: 26/09/2023 – 17:00

1 min

The French chief was in the Italian capital to attend the state funeral of former president Giorgio Napolitano, who died on Friday aged 98.

A pointy rise in migrant landings to the Italian island of Lampedusa earlier this month reignited a bitter debate throughout the EU over who takes accountability for asylum seekers.

There has been significantly heated rhetoric in France, the place political events in the nation’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft legislation governing new arrivals.

“We cannot leave the Italians alone,” Macron mentioned in a tv interview on Sunday—a proposal of assist that Meloni instantly mentioned she “welcomed with great interest”.

The two leaders final met in Paris in June, and are additionally each due at a summit of Mediterranean leaders in Malta on Friday.

Meloni has additionally clashed over migration with Germany, whose president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was additionally amongst these at Napolitano’s funeral.

The Italian premier wrote to Chancellor Olaf Scholz on the weekend to complain about Berlin’s funding of charity initiatives to assist migrants both at sea or onshore in Italy.

Rome blames the NGO boats that conduct rescue missions in the central Mediterranean—the world’s deadliest sea crossing for migrants—for encouraging arrivals from North Africa.

But information exhibits they don’t work as a so-called pull issue, departures are primarily based on the climate not the presence of NGO boats, and the overwhelming majority of migrants are rescued by the Italian coastguard, based on the inside ministry.

Napolitano was a former communist who turned the primary Italian president to serve a second time period.

Renowned for his moderation and statesmanship, he was thought to be a guarantor of stability throughout a time of specific turbulence in Italian politics.

In workplace from 2006 to 2015, he was president through the premierships of Romano Prodi, Silvio Berlusconi, Mario Monti, Enrico Letta and Matteo Renzi.

Representatives from Albania, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Britain and the European Union had been additionally introduced among the many visitor checklist for the funeral.

Unusually for Italy, Napolitano had requested to have a non-religious ceremony, which was held in the decrease home of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies.

(AFP)