The Meloni-Salvini “pact” before the visit to Cutro (but the challenge is not over) – Corriere.it

ROME – The transfer to the shores of the tragedy of Steccato di Cutro has not appeased the controversies, if anything it has reinvigorated them. The oppositions contest the prime minister for having shown indifference to the suffering of the victims’ families, describing her as “nervous” and reproaching the government for not having strengthened the sea rescue machine in the decree approved in Calabria. Yet executive sources ensure that
Giorgia Meloni
And returned from the small town in the province of Crotone “politically very satisfied” for the unanimous green light to the
decree
with which the right has declared war on smugglers. And for having reached his historic electorate with a message in a bottle that says “no to clandestine arrivals, yes to legal entries”.

The premier has not regretted not going to Cutro immediately after the tragedy, “because I would have arrived empty-handed and they would have told me it was just a runway,” she confided to the ministers. While now there is a “substantial provision”, with sentences of up to 30 years and a new “international” crime.

Accused by the opposition of not kneeling in front of the coffins and perhaps disappointed because the families’ invitation to Palazzo Chigi was not accepted, Meloni feels anything but defeated. And he will continue to work so that the “all-round strategy” to target criminal organizations and make reception rules more fluid will soon obtain concrete results in Europe as well. If the League claims a political victory, for Meloni “the government won”. For her, one of the most important objectives, after the storm due to the delay in the relief efforts that hit Matteo Piantedosi without sparing the leader of the League, was to show a compact and non-quarrelsome team. “The government is cohesive and enjoys excellent health,” Minister Adolfo Urso tries to sweep away the waste.

There challenge between Meloni and Salvini on the ownership of the firmness line is destined to continue under the radar. But on the eve of the CDM of Cutro the premier and her deputy have made a sort of pact: to leave out the most controversial points of the 2018 security decrees from the text and yet publicly acknowledge to Salvini, during the press conference, that the philosophy of the rules invoked by the League is the right one. “Salvini won because he talks about expulsions and the reduction of special protection”, is the reading of the green Angelo Bonelli. But Nicola Molteni himself, Undersecretary of the Interior very close to Salvini, must admit that the special protection is (for now) revisited and not abolished.

In return the Minister of Transport He obtained the removal of the law that strengthened the duties of the Navy military on marine surveillance, downsizing the Coast Guard. A point in favor of the League, even if in the government there are those who assure that the question, which is close to the heart of the Defense and which was born to give an answer on water monitoring, will soon be re-examined. «What interests us are not so much the military ships, but the radars of the Navy»explains those familiar with the dossier.

At Palazzo Chigi concern is high for the wave of arrivals on our shores

. The data from the Interior Ministry speak of three thousand people in three days and tripled landingssince the beginning of the year, compared to the same period of 2022. Numbers that “confirm a very serious situation” and reinforce the conviction in the premier’s entourage that the strategy illustrated to Cutro is the right one. Meloni will make the next moves in Brusselsto the EU Council of 23 and 24 March. He will ask for money for the migratory route that passes through Tunisia and that “Marshall plan to invest substantial funds in Africa” ​​relaunched by Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani. With a double objective: to shake up Europe on the issue of migrants and regain centrality.