Almost 40 years have passed since that meeting organized in 85 at the gates of Tunis by the then Minister of Labor Gianni De Michelis with colleagues from the North and South shores of the Mediterranean. Right there where the premier Melons he's going twice in one week. The emergency migrants as we came to know it later in the various declinations of the humanitarian crises in the Balkans, the mass escapes from Albania of the "pyramid" and the more recent routes of smugglers from Libya and Tunisia it was still very far away. And yet, De Michelis warned: "demography, wars and climate change won't give us discounts, they will come to us anyway and they will also come swimming".
Never prediction was more accurate. The agreement that is now defined as "historic in scope" after so many unsuccessful attempts reached the other night in Luxembourg at the meeting of the 27 Interior Ministers has every ambition to turn the page on European immigration policy and asylum, avoiding that it is only the countries of first reception that pay the price for a situation that is no longer tolerable, such as Italy, Malta, Greece and Spain.
Migrants: Meloni is satisfied as she moves away from Hungary and Poland
Satisfied with the result achieved by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for the Italian contribution to the agreement, even if she had to pay the political price of differentiating herself for once from some countries "friends" of Visegrad such as Poland e Hungary, the only ones who voted against the agreement. It was she who had proposed an unfeasible naval blockade and focused a large part of her communication strategy during the electoral campaign on the fight against illegal immigration and who then found herself having to deal with 55 landings and above all with the Cutro tragedy.
The Minister of the Interior Crying himself, backed by colleagues from other countries of first reception, has done everything to prevent Italy from transforming itself into a large collection center for immigrants from all over Europe. Italy has in fact requested and obtained that the money for the missed relocations flow into a fund managed by Brussels for concrete projects on the "external dimension".
Migrants: the real crux of the dispute
But the real crux of the dispute over which the agreement risked falling apart due to a dispute between Italy and Germany (just as the chancellor Olaf was at Palazzo Chigi Scholz met Meloni) concerned the possibility of reaching agreements with third countries where to send back migrants once asylum was denied. Germany demanded a very strict interpretation. Italy, supported by other countries, such as the Netherlands, has requested and obtained that individual Member States define the concept of 'safe third country' to which a migrant can be transferred "and determine whether there is a connection between the applicant and the third country”
In all this, the Dublin regulations on the country of first reception will still remain in force. But Italy and the other States of first entry will have to be much more rigorous in welcoming and identifying migrants within 24 hours of entry, to avoid (as happens today) that they take trains and head towards Ventimiglia or the Brenner. The Governments of the Member States then undertake to implement accelerated examination procedures for asylum applications which statistically have less chance of obtaining the green light. All commitments which, knowing well the difficulties of the Italian bureaucracy, make this new path undertaken by the EU right but not without difficulties.
So all right? We will see it over the months. For now, it's enough for us to bring home a result that brings us closer to Brussels and the other major EU countries after months of misunderstandings and with the knots linked to the PNRR still to be resolved.
However, it is always good to remember that the only governments able to achieve concrete results in terms of migration policies were those of left. In 1997, during the Prodi government, the Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini reached an agreement with his Albanian counterpart which allowed our Guardia di Finanza to position their vehicles in front of the bay of Vlora and the island of Saseno, blocking all departures of rubber tires towards the Italian coasts. And also in 2017 (Gentiloni Government) we owe the Minister of the Interior Marco Minniti the agreement with the Libyan "mayors" who, in the face of generous "cooperation" programs, blocked the "smugglers" on the ground and all departures from the Libyan coast.
