Migrants, Meloni focuses on July for the first EU measures and asks for more investments - Corriere.it

Migrants, Meloni focuses on July for the first EU measures and asks for more investments - Corriere.it


Of Marco Galluzzo

In von der Leyen's letter there is talk of drones and radars. The new maritime surveillance systems should be operational from July

ROME The date engraved in the diary of
Giorgia Meloni
It's July 1 this year. From that day on, the Italian government could start collecting the fruits of the coordinated and structural action that the European Commission is carrying out on the front of illegal migration. She put it in black and white anyway
Ursula von der Leyen in the letter she sent to the 27 states of the Union
ahead of the European Council which ended two days ago.

That letter is currently a sort of compass for the Italian government: in July new maritime surveillance systems, radar and via drones, should be operational in the Mediterranean routes, systems on which Brussels has launched a tender in recent days. While the strengthening of Frontex
- with the creation of special bodies, with an equally special legal status - on the land borders of the Balkans should eventually have as a counterpart also the strengthening of maritime border controls. Also there growth of the financial commitment of the EUwhich Giorgia Meloni still considers insufficient, but which already exceeds 600 million euros in the medium termis part of the constant dialogue between Rome and Brussels.

Meloni and the President of the Commission met at the end of the European Council
, Friday, in the early afternoon. And of course they also said goodbye with a promise: the Commission offices will do everything to present concrete proposals in June on that new plan for migrants which it is hoped will be approved by the end of the year. It is a plan under construction, on which the Italian government travels in perfect synthesis with the offices of the "executive government" of the EU, but which will not be focused, if and when it sees the light, only on the Mediterranean.

For this the pressing of the premier with the Commission is also based on the constant and necessary diplomatic effort to convince the other Member States to invest more financial resources, in the order of a few billion euros, allocating a not indifferent part to the control of the Strait of Sicily, the departing from Egypt and Tunisia,
of all those corridors of illegality, and at the same time of human tragedies, which identify the first entry into the Union at the Italian borders.

On the strengthening of external borders, including maritime ones, one of the four pillars on which the Commission is working, we will need the backing of a majority of Member States. In the past, there has been no lack of proposals from Brussels, or at least not only that, certainly the consensus of a decisive slice of governments has been lacking to actually change rules and investments.

And even if it may appear a paradox, after months of diplomatic clashes triggered by a dispute over the first port of call of an NGO boat, the newfound harmony with Macron may be important for Italian objectives. It is no coincidence that Meloni, after the meeting in Brussels with the French president, remarked that the Elysee has the will to cooperate in "a structural solution" to the dossier.

The unity of the majority will also be decisive in the coming months: «Giorgia has done and is doing a great job, every day we talk, we discuss and share paths and ideas and the more they try to distance us, the more we unite. Meloni goes to Europe and promotes the country's interestswhile there are some Italians who go to Europe to look after the interests of others", declared yesterday Matteo Salvini, now Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Infrastructure, former Minister of the Interior, who has marked the Italian debate on the fight against illegal immigration of the last years.

March 25, 2023 (change March 25, 2023 | 22:58)



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