Italy is receiving migratory pressure similar to that of 2017. Frontex, the European border control agency, reported yesterday that the Central Mediterranean was the most active route in the first three months of 2023, when almost 28,000 irregular crossings have been detected. , triple that in the same period last year. Only in March some 13,200 people have reached Europe through this route, the majority coming from the Ivory Coast, Guinea and Pakistan.
The Frontex report comes one day after the Government of Giorgia Meloni decreed to apply the state of emergency for the migration issue, a measure that will last six months and for which a game of five million euros has already been approved. Although the consequences are still unknown, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) does not see it with bad eyes. "It is urgent to quickly find reception sites in the face of a fairly significant flow of migrants from a logistical point of view," says Flavio di Giacomo, spokesman for this United Nations organization for the Mediterranean. Specific situations –usually natural disasters– the Italian Executive endows itself with extraordinary powers so that the procedures are less burdensome. “The state of emergency is nothing out of the ordinary because it had already been declared a few years ago. It is an instrument that the Government uses to expedite administrative and bureaucratic procedures and prevent public tenders to find places of reception from being extended”, indicates Di Giacomo.
In Italy, the critical situation is on the island of Lampedusa, the closest to Tunisia, a country where recent instability due to the economic crisis and increased tensions after President Kais Said accused sub-Saharans of representing a " danger" have caused the consignments to multiply, which already exceed those of the Libyan coasts. Given the lack of rescue ships and with the NGOs in the crosshairs of the Italian government (the ship Louise Michel is still blocked), the boats that manage to avoid the Libyan and Tunisian coast guards end up disembarking in Lampedusa. At this moment the small reception center on the island, with a capacity for about 300 people, is overflowing. This weekend there were more than 1,600 people at the access point. "The center is full and mobility needs to be speeded up," Di Giacomo underlines.
The Italian state of emergency is also a wake-up call to Brussels by the Meloni Executive, which has been calling for a European solution to the migration challenge for months. Yesterday the European Commission "took note" of the declaration of this measure, according to the community spokesperson for the Interior, Anitta Hipper, who assured that they are in "close contact" with Rome to see the implications of a "national competition". "We will have to see the measures in detail before commenting on them," she settled.
