Migrants, variations (and similarities) between Sanchez and Meloni on the administration of flows | EUROtoday

«I don't assume that governments need individuals to die, however they’re prepared to simply accept that individuals undergo and die in trade for the truth that they don't arrive», he concluded, stating that European nations ought to implement “«more flexible, but orderly policies » to make legal entry possible. “They should do it because it is in our interest.”

The anti-immigration battles and the Mattei plan

In the dualism between pro and anti-immigration forces, Italy knows where to place itself. The fight against flows is one of the most sensitive political battles in the right-wing majority of Giorgia Meloni's government and has flowed, with some adjustments, into its government action. The prime minister and her coalition have built part of their political capital on combating migratory flows, especially from Africa, alternating announcements on “collaboration” plans with the continent and interventions to stem movements along the various Mediterranean routes. Both directions have come together under the umbrella of the Mattei Plan for Africa, the plan for the relaunch of relations with Africa renamed in homage to Enrico, founder of Eni: the national energy giant, a very important player in relations intertwined between the various Italian governments and their counterparts south and north of the Sahara.

The architecture of the Plan is based on the design of a collaboration to eradicate the very causes of migration, stimulating sustainable economic growth in the sub-Saharan area and Mediterranean Africa. In fact, attention seems to have focused above all on the double side of energy supplies and, indeed, migration. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni orchestrated and coordinated the memorandum of understanding signed in 2023 by the EU and Tunisia, an agreement worth over a billion euros which “exchanges” the control of migratory flows with the payment of some tranches of funding for Tunisian economic growth . A second Mou was signed in March 2024 in Egypt, an unstable giant that has teetered on the brink of default and is considered the most insidious front for a migratory crisis that overlaps internal flows, pressure from the south with the conflict in Sudan and from the East with the unknown of a mass exodus from the Gaza Strip.

A year and a half after taking office, Meloni's executive claims to have reduced migratory flows on the Italian coasts. The numbers prove him only partially right. Interior Minister Matteo Pinantedosi claimed in his speech to the Senate, the Italian upper house, the arrival of “18,550 migrants in comparison with 45,507 final 12 months”: a 60% drop in arrivals compared to the same period in 2023 The over 18,000 arrivals recorded on our coasts as of May 16th are equivalent to a robust decline compared to the same period in 2023, in the first months of the Meloni government, but an increase compared to the 15,004 for the same period in 2022. The main nationalities registered at the moment. of the landings are Bangladesh (3,849), Syria (2,682), Tunisia (2,601), Guinea (1,761), Egypt (1,207), Mali (740), Pakistan (607), Gambia (601), Sudan (588) and Costa Rica 'Ivory (585). In 7 cases out of 10 we are talking about African countries, the continent at the heart of the Mattei Plan itself.

The double fragility of the Italian approach

The insistence on the migratory “emergency” just isn’t new and has been mirrored, for a while, in a legislative strategy dominated by two components: the emergency logic and indifference to human rights ruled by worldwide laws.