The small island of Lampedusa experienced a massive influx of migrants last week. In response, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced this Monday that he would go to Rome in the afternoon to discuss European cooperation on the subject.
“At the request of the President [Emmanuel Macron] I am going to Rome this afternoon,” he declared on Europe1 and CNews media this Monday, explaining that France wanted in particular to “help [l’Italie] to hold its external border, the first gateway to Europe from North Africa. Between last Monday and Wednesday, around 8,500 people, more than the entire population of Lampedusa, arrived aboard 199 boats, according to figures from the United Nations migration agency.
A message of “firmness”
This situation has put the island’s reception capacities under great strain, generated a political shock wave in Italy and relaunched the thorny question of European solidarity in terms of the distribution of asylum seekers to support the countries first. line of these arrivals. “There cannot be a message given to people who come to our soil [européen] that they will be welcomed whatever happens”, however underlined Gérald Darmanin, who wants to send a message of “firmness” to Rome.
“We must apply European rules,” he added: “If there are asylum seekers who are eligible for asylum, who are persecuted for political reasons, obviously, they are refugees. And in this case, France (…), as it has always done, can welcome these people.” But in “60%” of cases, they “come from countries like Ivory Coast, Guinea, Gambia”, where “there is no humanitarian question”.
No visit to Lampedusa
“What we want to say to our Italian friends, who I believe are in perfect agreement with us, [c’est] that we must protect the external borders of the European Union and above all immediately look at asylum applications, and when they are not eligible send them back to their country,” he said.
Gérald Darmanin will not go to Lampedusa, like the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen who presented an emergency plan there on Sunday, said the minister’s entourage.