Meloni acknowledges that she is not “satisfied” with her immigration management

The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, has acknowledged that she is not satisfied with her Government's management of immigration matters, after landings increased by more than 50% in 2023 and 157,000 migrants arrived in the country, a figure that does not It has been seen since 2016. “I do not consider the results on immigration to be satisfactory, especially compared to the amount of work I have dedicated to this matter. However, I think that if I had not done it, things would have been much, much worse,” she declared at the start-of-the-year press conference held this Thursday, in which the prime minister answered questions from journalists. for just over three hours.

The meeting with the press, as is traditional, was going to be held at the end of December to take stock of the year, but it was postponed twice due to health problems of the head of Government. Meloni has insisted on the immigration issue and has assured that it will continue to be a priority issue for his Executive. “If you ask me if I am satisfied today, I tell you no, but I do believe that I will be at the end of this term. I will continue working on it, it is one of my priorities,” she noted. And she added: “I am somewhat more satisfied with the figures for the last part of the year, which show a decrease compared to the first part. I know that more was expected in this, I am willing to take responsibility.”

It is common for the number of arrivals to decrease in the last months of the year due to unfavorable weather conditions; fewer boats loaded with migrants take to the sea off the African coast. 2023 has been a complicated year for Italy in immigration matters. Meloni had won the elections a year earlier by promising a strong hand and a drastic decrease in arrivals and, instead, he witnessed a considerable rebound in landings, as had not happened for a long time. In September, the island of Lampedusa was on the brink of collapse with the arrival of more than 7,000 migrants in just a few days.

The far-right leader announced in November as a star measure the installation in Albania of centers to welcome those disembarked in Italy, but less than a month later the Albanian Constitutional Court overturned the initiative. The controversial agreement that the EU signed with Tunisia to stop departures, with Meloni as mediator, is also frozen in practice.

The pressure on Italy, which in recent years has dismantled its reception and integration system, continues to be high. “It is a very complex job. Immigration is the challenge of our time, we are trying to solve the problem in the long term and in a structural way,” the prime minister apologized. “Things are beginning to change, I trust I can do more,” she added. And he celebrated that the traditional requests of his party, Brothers of Italy, are now part of the debates in the European Union, such as “the need to work in Africa and stop departures there,” he said, without commenting on the new migration pact. that the EU closed a few weeks ago.

The Italian Prime Minister has once again proposed the idea of ​​setting up centers in Africa for migrants, “to assess there who has the right to come to Europe and who does not.” And she has defended the Mattei Plan, a series of agreements with various African countries, which also include alliances in energy matters and which, among other things, would serve to stop exits. Meloni has been working on them for months, but they haven't just started.

Meloni touched on numerous topics at the press conference. She has also announced that she has asked her party, Brothers of Italy, founded and directed by her, to suspend the deputy Emanuele Pozzolo, who is being investigated for firing his pistol that wounded a man at a New Year's Eve party. “I have asked that Pozzolo be referred to the arbitration commission of the Brothers of Italy, regardless of the work done by the competent judicial authority, and that, pending the trial, he be suspended,” Meloni reported.

Complaint against Pozzolo

Shortly after that announcement, it was learned that the man who was slightly injured in the leg, the son-in-law of an escort of the Undersecretary of Justice, Andrea Delmastro, also present at the party, filed a complaint against Pozzolo for having shot him. The deputy has acknowledged that the bullet came from his gun, but has denied that he pulled the trigger. “Deputy Pozzolo has a weapons permit for his personal defense and was carrying one on New Year's Eve. Whoever owns a weapon has the legal and moral obligation to carry it responsibly and seriously. And that's why there is a problem with what happened, because it shows that someone was not responsible. If that applies to any citizen, even more so to a parliamentarian and even more so to a member of the Brothers of Italy,” said the head of the Executive.

Meloni has also defended his decision to abandon the Chinese New Silk Road, President Xi Jinping's flagship program to increase its influence in the world, which Italy had joined in 2019 with the Government of Giuseppe Conte. “I made the decision about the Silk Road out of consistency with what I think. We were the only G-7 country that was part of it. The results obtained convince me even more of my decision, the trade balance had become increasingly unfavorable for Italy. It has allowed many more Chinese products to enter Italy. Maximum reciprocity was guaranteed, which still does not exist, as the European Commission says, so I am afraid it has not worked. In my opinion, politically it was not correct and economically it was not effective,” he noted.

And he highlighted that bilateral relations with China have not suffered: “I will go to Beijing as soon as possible at the invitation of the Chinese president. Other agreements can be made, relations are excellent, there is no punitive or distancing attitude. We must reactivate relations with China and also encourage Chinese investments that could be interesting.”

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