SHARE
COPY LINK

IMMIGRATION

Rome ‘too crowded’ for more migrants: mayor

Rome receives the second-largest number of refugees among Italian cities, but Mayor Ignazio Marino has warned that the Italian capital is reaching saturation point.

Rome 'too crowded' for more migrants: mayor
Refugees camped outside Rome's Tiburtina station in June. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

His warning comes less than a month after violent protests broke out over the arrival of 100 refugees in Casale San Nicola, a suburb in the outskirts of the city.

Concerned about how to accommodate more refugees, Marino said the city is “overcrowded”.

“We can't welcome 18 to 20 percent of people who arrive in our country. We don't have the resources,” he was cited by Ansa as telling a Lower House commission on immigration on Tuesday.

With reception centres bursting at the seams, refugees set up a makeshift camp outside Rome’s Tiburtina station in mid-June before it was raided by police.

Several leaders in Italy's wealthier north have refused to bow to a government call to take in more refugees, but this is the first time concerns have been voiced by the Rome mayor.

But tensions over immigration have escalated across Italy in recent months. A day before the Rome protests, residents in a Treviso district burnt furniture intended for refugees in protest against their arrival. The refugees were eventually taken to an empty police station outside the city. 

Marino is also under pressure to fix the city’s myriad other problems, including its transport system, the maintenance of monuments and its waste issue.

IMMIGRATION

France ‘will not welcome migrants’ from Lampedusa: interior minister

France "will not welcome migrants" from the island, Gérald Darmanin has insisted

France 'will not welcome migrants' from Lampedusa: interior minister

France will not welcome any migrants coming from Italy’s Lampedusa, interior minister Gérald Darmanin has said after the Mediterranean island saw record numbers of arrivals.

Some 8,500 people arrived on Lampedusa on 199 boats between Monday and Wednesday last week, according to the UN’s International Organisation for
Migration, prompting European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen to travel there Sunday to announce an emergency action plan.

According to Darmanin, Paris told Italy it was “ready to help them return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, giving the
example of Ivory Coast and Senegal.

But France “will not welcome migrants” from the island, he said, speaking on French television on Tuesday evening.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called on Italy’s EU partners to share more of the responsibility.

The recent arrivals on Lampedusa equal more than the whole population of the tiny Italian island.

The mass movement has stoked the immigration debate in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

France is expected to face a call from Pope Francis for greater tolerance towards migrants later this week during a high-profile visit to Mediterranean city Marseille, where the pontiff will meet President Emmanuel Macron and celebrate mass before tens of thousands in a stadium.

SHOW COMMENTS