The recurring tensions between the Italian government of Giorgia Meloni and the French government of Emmanuel Macron are experiencing a new chapter today. Italian Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani has canceled a planned trip to Paris alleging that French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has "insulted" Italy by criticizing Meloni over his immigration management.
Darmanin, who regularly attacks the extreme right, compared Meloni to the leader of the National Rally, Marine Le Pen, in criticizing Italy's migration policy at a time when arrivals are tripling on the country's coasts. “Meloni,” she said, “is she like Le Pen. She gets elected because she promises that we are going to see what we are going to see and in the end what we see is that (the migration problem) does not stop but rather amplifies because Italy is experiencing a serious migration crisis." Then, she stressed that "Meloni she is incapable of solving the immigration problem for which she was elected.”
Tajani was supposed to travel to the French capital this Thursday to meet with her counterpart, Catherine Colonna, but after these "unacceptable" comments, she canceled the trip. “This is not the spirit in which common European challenges should be faced,” she wrote on Twitter.
It is not the first time that both Executives have crossed darts, but until now no minister had suspended a meeting. In February, Meloni staged his anger at Macron for arranging a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Paris the day before a summit of European leaders in Brussels. The far-right went so far as to accuse the French president of weakening European unity with a dinner that, according to her, was absolutely "inappropriate" because it excluded the rest of the countries.
The period as Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who was in excellent harmony with Macron, at the head of the Italian Government was a brief hiatus between years of clashes between Rome and Paris. The most serious took place during the first government of Giuseppe Conte formed by the 5 Star Movement and the League, when France even called its ambassador to Italy for consultations after the meeting of an Italian deputy prime minister with the yellow vests.
In the last Italian electoral campaign it was already clear that relations were going to be tense again after some interventions by French ministers that were interpreted as threats of interference by the Italian extreme right. In Rome, it was not liked at all that the French Minister for European Affairs, Laurence Boone, said in an interview with the newspaper La Repubblica that Paris was going to "monitor respect for rights and freedoms" by the right-wing Italian government. Shortly after, the most critical moment came, an initial clash with Macron after France was forced to open its ports to the Ocean Viking humanitarian ship in the face of Italian rebuffs, something Rome explained as a misunderstanding.
