French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has stated that France will not take in any migrants from the Italian island of Lampedusa after waves of boats containing more illegals than the island’s entire population arrived in recent days.
While the French minister assured Italy that France would aid in helping to defend Italy’s borders, Darmanin was firm on rejecting the idea that his country would take in any illegals saying, “We will not take charge of the migrants who are arriving in Lampedusa,” the newspaper Il Giornale reports. Darmanin added,
What we want to say to our Italian friends, who I believe are in full agreement with us, is that we must protect the external borders of the European Union and above all immediately examine asylum applications. When the conditions are not there, send migrants back to their country.
According to a report from the broadcaster Europe1, French police along the Italian border fear there may be a massive illegal migrant surge as migrants arriving illegally in Italy attempt to transit through the country to France and elsewhere.
Vincent Guillermin, departmental secretary of the Alliance union, a French police union, commented on the situation in Lampedusa saying,
These migrants will try to cross the border, it’s obvious. We are about fifty police officers chartered permanently to hold the border … The police are already very tired, we are very worried.
Around 60 migrants are already stopped by police every day along the Italian border in the town of Montgenèvre, a figure three times higher than the start of 2023.
Pro-migration NGOs and associations are also claiming that the influx has led to a lack of accommodation availability. Mireille Bertho, head of reception for the association Savoie Solidarité Migrants has called on the government to do more:
We are in difficulty because the emergency shelters do not have the means, for the moment, in line with the needs. We are telling the public authorities that they must rise to the occasion. Currently, this is no longer possible for us.
The French Minister’s comments come as tensions are at a boiling point in Lampedusa itself, with local authorities desperately trying to find space for the thousands of migrants who arrived on the island in recent days as some estimate as many as 10,000 illegals may have landed in just three days, dwarfing the island’s population of just over 6,000.
The migrant reception centre on the island, run by the Red Cross and known as the hot spot, has accommodation for just 400 or so people and has been completely overwhelmed.
Migrants decided to head into the centre of Lampedusa where some local restaurants offered them food, while others denied them entry. The municipal government has also declared a local state of emergency due to the influx of illegals.
Some locals, however, are not pleased with the current state of affairs and became enraged over rumours that a former LORAN navigation system base on the eastern part of the island would be used to house migrants.
Around a hundred Lampedusa locals proceeded to block the streets over the weekend, joined by Deputy Mayor Attilio Lucia, shouting various slogans including, “Lampedusa is ours and not of the government or the European Union!”
“From today Lampedusa says enough,” Deputy Mayor Lucia said and added, “The Lampedusans are tired, enough is enough. Enough!”
He went on to slam Lampedusa Mayor Filippo Mannino saying, “This is a failed government. They have made it known that they want to create a tent city,” and added,
Let’s say enough is enough. No more reception centres, no more tent cities. Lampedusa, today, wakes up and says: stop this situation. We cannot accommodate all these people, we are willing to stay night and day, in a fixed manner to monitor that no one enters with tents to create the tent city.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been working for months with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and others in an attempt to reduce illegal migration numbers in Italy, which have reached levels not seen since the height of the 2015-2016 migration crisis.
Both Prime Minister Meloni and President von der Leyen made a surprise visit to Lampedusa on Sunday, September 17th and called for a “European answer” to what some have labelled as an “invasion.”
“At stake here is the future that Europe wants to give itself: the future depends on Europe’s ability to deal with the great epochal challenges!” Prime Minister Meloni said:
We will never solve the problem by talking about redistribution. The only way to seriously tackle the problem is to stop illegal departures … if anyone in Europe thinks this issue will simply be resolved within the borders of Italy, they are mistaken.”
President von der Leyen, meanwhile, slammed people traffickers and smugglers saying,
But we will decide who comes to the European Union and under what circumstances, and not the smugglers and traffickers. … Those who do not have the right cannot remain.
The European Commission head then laid out a ten-point plan to tackle people smuggling networks, increase the presence of authorities like the border agency Frontex and the coastguard of Tunisia as well as take pressure off Italy by redistributing immigrants in the EU and speeding up the deportation of failed asylum seekers.
