The migrant emergency that has brought Italy’s first reception system to its knees will be among the issues that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will address – for the first time as prime minister – at the 78th session of the UN General Assembly.
Meloni also plans to discuss the reform of the UN, the centrality of multilateralism and the “necessary and unrelenting” work for a “just peace” in Ukraine.
“Italy cannot be left alone, and Europe’s help is not enough. This is the meaning of her speech to the UN General Assembly,” the Italian press quoted a government source as saying.
Also planned are a series of meetings, including one with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and possibly with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, to discuss migration flows and find standard solutions.
The migration dossier that first had to be solved at the EU level now requires the intervention of the EU and the international community, given the seriousness and involvement of thousands of migrants from different non-EU countries.
“Lampedusa is just the tip of an iceberg”, said Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (Forza Italia/EPP), while his French counterpart, Foreign Minister Gérald Darmanin, declares that Paris will not accept migrants who have arrived on the Sicilian island.
Meloni spared no criticism to either the leftist opposition in Italy or the Socialists and Democrats in Brussels, in particular quoting EU High Representative Josep Borrell, who is critical of the memorandum of understanding signed between Brussels and Tunisia to halt departures, which the Italian premier strongly advocated.
The Italian government sees the failure to provide EU funds to Tunis as one of the main reasons for the surge in landings in recent weeks, which has resulted from the loosening of controls on the Tunisian coast.
“It is sad to see that part of the Italian and European political forces, for ideological reasons or, worse, for political calculation, are rowing against and doing everything to dismantle the work being carried out”, Meloni said.
“In essence, the will of the European left is to make mass illegal immigration unavoidable”, Meloni added, while Tajani stressed: “When the European Commission signs an agreement, that agreement must then be respected”.
(Federica Pascale | Euractiv.it)
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Source: euractiv.com
