European, Carola Rackete runs for the German Linke: 'But I am not the icon of migrants'

Her new sources of inspiration were Labour in the UK and the victory of Lula in Brazil. Carola Rackete , 36, owes her notoriety to the conflict in 2019 as a captain in the Mediterranean with then Interior Minister Matteo Salvini but now that she is a leading candidate at the European elections for the German Linke she wants to leave that public image behind and focus political action on climate engagement. The experience with the German NGO Sea Watch, the activist told the Guardian, taught her 'how much a civil society organisation can achieve'.

The impetus to aim for the euro-parliamentary benches, she said, comes from fears about the advance of the ultra-right across the EU. "Do we want those who are in favour of human rights and climate justice to be in the majority, or are we going to leave the decision to the right and the fascists? It is a rather simple question that we have to face,' he says. On the case of Ilaria Salis (also a candidate in the European) with Ansa he comments: 'This case shows how dangerous the rise of the far right is for democracy in Europe. In Hungary, under Meloni's friend Orbán, the rule of law is being trampled underfoot'. "Ilaria Salis has spent an incredible amount of time in solitary confinement and has been publicly humiliated in court. The charges against her are very weak. This is obviously a case of political justice: Orbán hopes that Nazi rallies in Hungary are undisturbed. That is why she is being punished for her anti-fascist activities before there is even a sentence. She should be released immediately."

Speaking of the Italian affair that made her internationally known in 2019, when as captain she disobeyed the then Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini, deciding to enter the port of Lampedusa anyway with 42 migrants on board the Sea Watch 3, Carola scoffs: "In my life I have not worked for more than six months with migrants. Whereas I have been involved in ecology for years. At Sea Watch I used to volunteer. Moreover, in recent years, many people have been arrested in the rescue at sea, and it is frankly a coincidence that I have become media famous. I understand that from the outside that affair may have become somewhat symbolic. But to establish that I should only be interested in migration policy would be nonsense. And this same symbolic figure I do not find it right. I don't think it responds to reality'.

In the course of the long tug-of-war that summer five years ago, the then head of the Viminale called Rackete on social media a 'braggart who plays politics on the skin of a few dozen migrants' and a 'rich German outlaw'. The Court of Milan had opened proceedings against Salvini on the charge of aggravated defamation against the activist. In June 2022, the judges had granted a request by the Lega Nord leader's lawyers and transferred the trial documents to Palazzo Madama so that the Senate could assess whether or not the sentences in question were covered by the insindicability related to his role as senator. The Council of Immunities had ruled that the opinions expressed in the summer of 2019 by the senator were 'indefeasible'. A decision that effectively annulled the trial.