More than a deliberate “act of war” againstItaly as deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini hypothesizes, over 100 landings registered in these hours in Lampedusa are, as many times in the past, simply the result of the good weather and sea conditions of the last few days exploited to the maximum by the illegal networks that manage the business of departures in Libya and Tunisia. They will decrease, as always, with worsening weather conditions.
Migrants: the No from Paris and Berlin up to the Dubliners
Meanwhile, in the buildings of Rome, Brussels and the main European capitals, the usual "waltz" of indignation, promises but above all hypocrisy is taking place. The authorities of our country, which complains of being left alone to govern the phenomenon, have almost always circumvented the rules of Dublin regulation which oblige the country of first arrival (i.e. Italy) to identify and detain the migrants landed. In most cases, migrants, after an Odyssey of months and often years, in a few hours from Sicily, reach Ventimiglia or Brenner to find their true final destinations. Even the French, Austrian and German authorities have in recent years implemented a swing of severity and tolerance, fueling hypocrisies. Moreover, the numbers of so-called relocations are ridiculous (just over 3 thousand for Germany). But at a time when television stations around the world, as in recent days, are broadcasting images of the landings, the Interior Ministers of Berlin and Paris can do nothing but write to the head of the Interior Ministry Piantedosi to ask him to take back over 10 thousand migrants Germany and around 7 thousand France.
Von der Leyen's too much optimism
Thus, on the day in which the president of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen delivers his State of the Union speech in Strasbourg, the two leading countries in Europe lock their borders against the so-called "Dublinists". Von Der Leyen spreads optimism and announces that she has now reached the final stages of the agreement on new Pact for asylum and migration. “The Pact has never been so close to being achieved” says the president of the community executive. But it is not clear what this optimism is based on.
Just as in many other dossiers, Europe shows a strong lack of leadership on the issue of migrants with different positions even among those who share the same ideas as it should be between the Italian center-right government and those of the Visegrad group, with Hungary in the lead.
The figures, to tell the truth, leave little room for optimism. They have brought in over 8 thousand arrivals in just a few days on tilt the hotspot of Lampedusa. From January 1st to today, 123.863 migrants have arrived in our country, 89% more than the 65.517 in the same period last year.
The French Minister of the Interior Darmanin announces: "we will double the numbers on the border between Menton and Ventimiglia" because the flows of migrants between Italy and France at that point "have increased by 100 percent". And Germany is suspending the voluntary reception program for migrants as confirmed by the Berlin Ministry of the Interior, following advance reports from Die Welt.
Migrants: Giorgia Meloni's buck-passing
The Italian Prime Minister obviously also fits into the great waltz of hypocrisies Giorgia Meloni. “The issue of relocation is secondary – he tells Bruno Vespa – very few people have been relocated in recent months, it's a Linus blanket, the question is not how we solve the problem, it's stopping arrivals in Italy, I don't see any concrete answers yet” . And then: "we communicated to our European partners that we could no longer automatically welcome back the so-called Dubliners, the irregulars who arrive and then pass to other nations while they did not lend us a hand in defending the external borders". In short, the waltz continues. And it won't be a good dance.
