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How would Italy’s idea for a new EU migrant distribution system work?

Italy's new government is pushing for an automatic system for distributing migrants rescued in the Mediterranean between European countries.

How would Italy's idea for a new EU migrant distribution system work?
Migrants rescued while attempting to cross the Mediterranean in January 2019. Photo: Federico Scoppa/AFP

The plans already have the green light from France and Germany, which would take a much higher percantage of migrants than Italy, Italian media said Thursday.

READ ALSO: How will Italy's new government approach immigration?

The plan could also involve Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania and Spain, La Repubblica and La Stampa dailies said.

Such a deal would put an end to case-by-case negotiations over who will take those saved during the perilous crossing from North Africa, which have left vulnerable asylum seekers trapped in limbo at sea for lengthy periods.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is expected to discuss the plan with France's President Emmanuel Macron when the latter visits Rome next week.

It will then be studied in more detail at a meeting of interior ministers on September 23 in Malta, ahead of a European summit in October in Luxembourg.

“There is great willingness to immediately reach even a temporary accord on the redistribution of migrants, which can then be fine tuned,” Conte said Wednesday during a visit to Brussels to meet European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen.

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He suggested EU countries that decline to take part could suffer financial penalties.

The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have refused in the past to take in any of those rescued at sea.

The automatic distribution system would be a temporary solution ahead of a revision of the so-called “Dublin regulation”, which assigns responsibility for migrants to the nation of first entry.

France and Germany were each willing to receive 25 percent of people plucked from flimsy dinghies in the Mediterranean, Repubblica said.

Italy would take in 10 percent – a lower proportion because it has already hosted tens of thousands of new arrivals, it said.

Should the deal take off, Rome would agree to reopen its ports to vessels which save migrants at sea, reversing a hardline stance taken by the country's ex-interior minister Matteo Salvini last year.

Under the new laws, ships that enter Italian waters without authorization face a fine of up to €1 million. The ships can also be seized.

'I migrate, you migrate, he migrates…' Protesters against another of Matteo Salvini's security decrees last year. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

Member comments

  1. As long as migrants are allowed to land, there will never be an ending to this inflow of immigrants. The left cast the nationalist as racists who are responsible for deaths at sea, yet it is the very accusers who, by non-enforcement of immigration laws encourage continued attempts by these people to cross the sea. How many are too many is the question? Where do you stop and how long will it take for these immigrants to overwhelm the societies in which they wish to live? Mostly illiterate, many criminal and by and large very few who care at all for the culture of the host country or to assimilate. This is supposed to be the future of Europe? If so, it will be a future wrought with conflict, excessive taxation, tribal conflicts, and higher crime. A better solution is to stop the immigrants at their border, provide incentives to their governments, ban ALL weapon sales by European nations to corrupt regimes and the corrupt UN/EU should act swiftly and decisively to thwart totalitarian regimes. Ah, yes, but that would be counter to the whims of the German industrialists, bankers and defense contractors.

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EUROPEAN UNION

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Sunday she would stand in upcoming European Parliament elections, a move apparently calculated to boost her far-right party, although she would be forced to resign immediately.

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-Fascist roots, came top in Italy’s 2022 general election with 26 percent of the vote.

It is polling at similar levels ahead of the European elections on from June 6-9.

With Meloni heading the list of candidates, Brothers of Italy could exploit its national popularity at the EU level, even though EU rules require that any winner already holding a ministerial position must immediately resign from the EU assembly.

“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022 — creating a majority that brings together the forces of the right to finally send the left into opposition, even in Europe!” Meloni told a party event in the Adriatic city of Pescara.

In a fiery, sweeping speech touching briefly on issues from surrogacy and Ramadan to artificial meat, Meloni extolled her coalition government’s one-and-a-half years in power and what she said were its efforts to combat illegal immigration, protect families and defend Christian values.

After speaking for over an hour in the combative tone reminiscent of her election campaigns, Meloni said she had decided to run for a seat in the European Parliament.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

“I’m doing it because I want to ask Italians if they are satisfied with the work we are doing in Italy and that we’re doing in Europe,” she said, suggesting that only she could unite Europe’s conservatives.

“I’m doing it because in addition to being president of Brothers of Italy I’m also the leader of the European conservatives who want to have a decisive role in changing the course of European politics,” she added.

In her rise to power, Meloni, as head of Brothers of Italy, often railed against the European Union, “LGBT lobbies” and what she has called the politically correct rhetoric of the left, appealing to many voters with her straight talk.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” she famously declared at a 2019 rally.

She used a similar tone Sunday, instructing voters to simply write “Giorgia” on their ballots.

“I have always been, I am, and will always be proud of being an ordinary person,” she shouted.

EU rules require that “newly elected MEP credentials undergo verification to ascertain that they do not hold an office that is incompatible with being a Member of the European Parliament,” including being a government minister.

READ ALSO: Why is Italy’s government being accused of helping tax dodgers?

The strategy has been used before, most recently in Italy in 2019 by Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party.

The EU Parliament elections do not provide for alliances within Italy’s parties, meaning that Brothers of Italy will be in direct competition with its coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

The Lega and Forza Italia are polling at about seven percent and eight percent, respectively.

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