The migrant dossier is not resolved in Tunis but in Brussels
Continuous landings in Lampedusa: problems, responsibilities and scenarios. Guiglia's notebook
It seems like a paradox, but it is the implacable truth of the facts. The very government that had made the fight against illegal immigration one of its claimed differences compared to the executives that had preceded it, today finds itself having to deal with a sea – literally – of arrivals beyond any control. Lampedusa recorded the record of 6,000 landings in a single day. “The apocalypse”, as the inhabitants of the island christened it, who made the welcome a point of pride that they could proudly show off – theirs and ours – to the whole world.
It happens that the closure of ports invoked in the past by Matteo Salvini or the Italian-European agreement signed in the present by Giorgia Meloni in Tunisia, as well as the hypothesized naval blockades or the promise to prosecute criminal smugglers in the Mediterranean, have not produced the results expected for at least two reasons.
The first is that the daily exodus of those who risk their lives on small boats is not the result of socio-political conditions or calm or stormy seas. It is, instead, a historical, geographical and above all human phenomenon that the West will have to deal with for years.
No police on any border will ever be able to stop the dream of desperation of those who flee. He can and must learn to govern it.
Secondly, the continuing impossibility of managing the flows from Africa with rigor and compassion depends on the guilty irresponsibility of the European Union, which persists in leaving the countries of first reception, and therefore Italy in particular, with the task of take care of it yourself. And then in the eyes of the EU's indifference, we also pay the "guilt" – this is paradoxical – of being hospitable, that is, of not controlling the borders with truncheons like in France, nor of blocking migrants like in Germany. All choices with a cynical electoral flavor (in a few months there will be voting in Europe), based on the pretext of an alleged "non-compliance" with agreements by Rome. But the only agreement that matters is the anachronistic Dublin system, an unfair source that penalizes Italy beyond all reasonableness.
And so the Meloni-government, having noted how powerless the proclamations are in the face of an entire continent, the African one, in motion, should now change strategy: the issue is not resolved in Tunis, but in Brussels. Our main interlocutors are the Europeans, to be shaken by every political and legal means.
(Published in L'Arena di Verona, Il Giornale di Vicenza and Bresciaoggi)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/sbarchi-italia-migranti-ue/ on Sun, 17 Sep 2023 07:20:14 +0000.