Italy’s populist prime minister promised tough action against illegal immigration. But reality shows a different picture.
- Giorgia Meloni took office as head of government in Italy in 2022 with big migration promises.
- But reality has caught up with the post-fascist: the number of arriving migrants has also recently increased in Italy.
- This article is available in German for the first time – the magazine first published it on October 24, 2023 Foreign policy.
She had fought against immigration with harsh words for decades, she held the office of Prime Minister for a year – and Giorgia Meloni is confronted with a wave of arrivals from Africa: That is one thing for her election promise to keep irregular migrants away from the Italian coast tough test.
With political instability, war, poverty and global warming plaguing much of Africa and the Middle East, more than 140,000 migrants have already reached Italy by boat by autumn 2023. That is almost twice as many as in the whole of 2022. Thousands more lost their lives on the journey. In September, 7,000 people arrived in a matter of days on Lampedusa, the small Italian island between Malta and Tunisia that has become a focal point of a European migration crisis that is overwhelming reception facilities there.
Meloni under pressure: 70 percent of Italians see migration promises as not being fulfilled
As the European Union reels from Islamist attacks in the French city of Arras and Brussels that highlight the inadequacies of its migration system – and amid heightened security concerns related to the war between Israel and Hamas – Meloni’s immigration problem shows how difficult it is for populist leaders to reconcile seemingly simple solutions with the reality of governance. More than 70 percent of Italians believe Meloni has done less than she promised on immigration. 66 percent say the government is unable to solve the problem.
“This is a big problem for Meloni,” said Matteo Villa, senior research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies. “The government is under a lot of pressure.”
Right-wing populists around the world are often accused of selling simplistic, unrealistic solutions to complex problems, particularly immigration. Former US President Donald Trump never built the “wall,” although his successor still aims to do so. Britain continues to receive tens of thousands of irregular migrants every year, despite right-wing Brexiteers convincing the country to break away from the EU to “take back control of its borders”. France’s centrist President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly beaten far-right leader Marine Le Pen in presidential debates by exposing the incoherence of her program.
Italy’s “new” migration course: returns only increase slightly under Meloni
Italy is now the main arrival point for migrants from countries such as Libya and Tunisia trying to reach Europe by sea. During the 2022 election campaign, Meloni claimed that illegal immigration threatened the safety and quality of life of citizens and promised to curb the influx. Their proposals included setting up an EU naval blockade off the coast of North Africa and EU immigration centers in Africa to examine people’s asylum claims there.
A year later, Meloni’s government and its voters face a harsh reality check. An Italian-backed deal reached by the EU and Tunisia in the summer that would see the country paid hundreds of millions of euros in return for its help in curbing exodus appears to be on the rocks: Tunisia’s strongman, Kais Saied , declared in October that he would not accept “handouts.”
Despite some vague commitments from the European Commission to strengthen border surveillance, a massive military operation to “block” large parts of Africa’s Mediterranean coast is still far from reality. And finally, the number of returns of rejected asylum seekers, which only accounted for 18 percent of all people obliged to leave the country in the last ten years, has only increased slightly under Meloni.
Migration dispute: Meloni in confrontation with Scholz and Germany
To maintain voter support, Italy’s government of Meloni’s post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia, as well as the far-right Lega and conservative Forza Italia, has resorted to a mix of finger-pointing and headline-grabbing announcements.
Right-wing leaders recently sharply criticized Germany over its public funding of a non-governmental organization that rescues migrants in the Mediterranean, which the Italian government believes promotes human trafficking. The NGO ship rescued and brought 753 people to land in 2023, which is just 0.6 percent of the total number of people arriving at sea. Nevertheless, in a letter leaked to the press, Meloni formally complained to her German counterpart Olaf Scholz, while a top League member claimed that the German government wanted to make Meloni’s cabinet look bad by “stuffing us with illegals.”
But Meloni’s government did more than complain. Last year it adopted a series of measures, including tougher penalties for smugglers, stricter procedures for granting humanitarian protection, as well as more detention centers and longer periods of detention for failed asylum seekers awaiting deportation.
Meloni’s solutions just more misery? Italy also lacks agreements with countries of origin
“For years, center-left governments have simply remained passive towards a phenomenon that we, on the other hand, are dealing with,” said Fratelli MP Sara Kelany.
Critics say most of these measures will have little effect but will plunge asylum seekers into more misery than they already are. “The initial reception is mixed with a detention system,” said Fabrizio Coresi, a migration expert at the human rights organization Action Aid. And since there are no agreements between Italy and many of the migrants’ countries of origin, rejected asylum seekers often cannot be deported but are simply released after a certain period of time. The government has also run into legal trouble and has faced legal defeats over parts of its asylum policy in recent weeks.
“These are measures taken with the government’s grassroots in mind, rather than actual solutions,” said Lorena Stella Martini, a Milan-based migration analyst.
“The majority of European countries are moving towards Italy’s position”
Meloni may even achieve better results at the European level, where she can thank her voters for putting the migrant issue back at the top of the agenda. The President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, accompanied Meloni to Tunisia in the summer and visited Lampedusa in September. She agreed with the Italian prime minister on the need to take urgent action to reduce the number of migrants arriving and promised a “coordinated response”.
The EU is also making progress on a new immigration pact that will impose stricter procedures for asylum seekers from so-called safe countries of origin. It also envisages looser rules on expelling rejected applicants and transferring thousands of migrants from frontline countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain to other member states that would otherwise have to pay thousands of euros for each rejected asylum seeker.
“For the first time in years, the majority of European countries are moving closer to the Italian position,” said Kelany, the Italian lawmaker.
Meloni threatens to own goal when it comes to migration – Fratelli are still ahead in the polls
That doesn’t necessarily have to be a blessing. Experts point out that the agreement that most migrants should be processed by the country where they first arrive is less a triumph than an own goal for Italy. “Meloni’s diplomatic victory is that everyone in the EU now accepts that the aim is to curb irregular immigration,” said expert Villa, “but if you look at the measures that [aus italienischer Sicht] are discussed, then it would be a catastrophe if they were actually implemented.”
Despite criticism of her handling of immigration, Meloni’s party continues to lead the polls by nearly 10 points. This could be because the so-called migration crisis in Italy is not as bad as it seems. Because many migrants end up moving on to other countries, the total number of foreigners in Italy has actually remained stable over the past decade. There are only half as many people born outside the EU in Italy as in Germany, and 2 million fewer than in France, whose population is only slightly larger.
Italy could even use more immigration: Over the summer, Meloni’s government quietly approved the entry of almost half a million non-EU workers by the end of 2025 to fill gaps in the Italian labor market. The bigger question is how long her voters’ patience will last. “Despite the talk about ending immigration flows and mass expulsion of irregular migrants, neither one nor the other will happen or is even possible,” said Milan expert Martini.
To the author
Michele Barbero is an Italian journalist based in Paris. Twitter (X): @MicheleBarbero
We are currently testing machine translations. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on October 24, 2023 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com“ was published – as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.
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