Migrants, differences (and similarities) between Sanchez and Meloni on flow management

"Unfortunately, the EU governing parties, practically without exception, both socialist and conservative, have developed anti-immigration policies that see immigration as a threat or a problem," he said.

In particular, the problem is that the Spanish government, like previous governments, did not promote the flow of migrant workers, instead treating migration as a security issue and implementing strict border controls, the director explained. This has led to 'incompetent' management of the humanitarian crisis.

While acknowledging that a number of positive reforms have been introduced to manage migration, e.g. with regard to settlement mechanisms, he noted that this has been done 'discreetly'.

"I think this shows that the discourse on migration remains very fearful, trapped by the logic of threat or tragedy, with an exaggerated focus on the southern border, even if quantitatively it is not justified because the numbers are much less," he said.

According to the director, Italy has a similar approach to Spain, although the right-wing Italian government is 'much more explicit' in its criticism of migrants and 'rhetorically harsher' towards NGOs.

"I don't think governments want people to die, but they are willing to accept that people suffer and die in exchange for them not arriving," he concluded, saying that European countries should implement ""more flexible, but orderly policies" to make legal entry possible. "They should do this because it is in our interest."

In the dualism between pro- and anti-immigration forces, Italy knows where to stand. The fight against flows is one of the most sensitive political battles in the right-wing majority of Giorgia Meloni's government and has merged, with some adjustments, into her government action. The Prime Minister and her coalition have built part of their political capital on the fight against migratory flows, especially from Africa, alternating between announcements on plans for 'collaboration' with the Continent and interventions to stem movements along the various Mediterranean routes. The one and the other have come together under the umbrella of the Mattei Plan for Africa, the plan to relaunch relations with Africa renamed after Enrico, founder of Eni: the national energy giant, a heavyweight player in the intertwined relations between the various Italian governments and their counterparts south and north of the Sahara.

The architecture of the Plan is based on the design of a collaboration to eradicate the very causes of migration by stimulating sustainable economic growth in the sub-Saharan belt and Mediterranean Africa. In fact, the focus seems to have been mainly on the double side of energy supplies and, indeed, migration. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni orchestrated and coordinated the memorandum of understanding signed in 2023 by the EU and Tunisia, an agreement worth over a billion euros that 'bartered' the control of migratory flows with the payment of certain tranches of funding for Tunisian economic growth. A second MoU was signed in March 2024 in Egypt, an unstable giant that has teetered on the 0rlo of default and is considered the most insidious front for a migratory crisis that overlaps internal flows, pressure from the south with the conflict in Sudan, and pressure from the east with the unknown of a mass exodus from the Gaza Strip.

A year and a half after taking office, Meloni's executive claims to have reduced the migratory flows on Italian shores. The numbers prove them only partially right. Interior Minister Matteo Pinantedosi claimed in a speech to the Senate, Italy's upper house, the arrival of '18,550 migrants compared to 45,507 last year': a 60% drop in arrivals compared to the same period in 2023. The more than 18,000 arrivals recorded on our shores as of 16 May are equivalent to a robust drop compared to the same period in 2023, in the first months of the Meloni government, but an increase compared to the 15,004 in the same period in 2022. The main nationalities recorded at the time of disembarkation are Bangladesh (3,849), Syria (2,682), Tunisia (2,601), Guinea (1,761), Egypt (1,207), Mali (740), Pakistan (607), Gambia (601), Sudan (588) and Ivory Coast (585). In 7 cases out of 10, we are talking about African countries, the continent at the heart of the Mattei Plan itself.

The insistence on the migratory 'emergency' is not unprecedented and has long been reflected in a legislative approach dominated by two factors: emergency logic and indifference to human rights governed by international law.

The first distinguishing feature is 'constituted, on a formal level, by the prevalence of aspects aimed at managing the migratory phenomenon from a constant perspective of emergency logic,' explains Francesca Mussi, researcher at the School of International Studies. at the University of Trento. Especially in recent years, Mussi emphasises, 'we have observed a frequent recourse to urgent decrees, sometimes without the prerequisites of necessity and urgency laid down in Article 77 of the Constitution being fully traceable in the underlying factual situations or in relation to the purposes of safeguarding security and public order'. The closest examples are the 2018 Security Decree and the so-called Security Decree bis of 2019, which were approved in a context that did not seem exactly incompatible with 'the normal course of the parliamentary legislative process'.

The second guiding thread reappears 'in the tendency of Italian legislation to "divest" itself of specific responsibilities concerning respect for the human rights of migrants - as deriving above all from the obligations provided for at the international level', says Mussi, also highlighting the 'attempt to deny that non-state actors, such as non-governmental organisations, can take on these responsibilities directly'.

Emergency logic and the long-term designs of the 'Mattei Plan' find a synthesis in another practice of Italian migration policies: externalisation. The double EU agreement with Tunisia and Egypt, marked by Italian direction, is based on the assumption of a proxy management of migratory flows. Rome attempted to sign a third one with Albania, which was opposed by the Tirana Supreme Court.

But there are those who appreciate the model and are asking to expand it on an EU scale, along a project that has already appeared on the table of the future European Commission. Italy and 14 other EU countries have sent a letter to the European Commission suggesting 'the examination of potential cooperation with third countries on return hub mechanisms, where returnees could be transferred pending their final removal'. Among the signatories were the governments of Sofia, Prague, Copenhagen, Tallinn, Athens, Nicosia, Riga, Vilnius, Valletta, The Hague, Vienna, Warsaw, Bucharest and Helsinki, with the absences of bigwigs such as Germany, France and Spain. The new element is the creation of a coalition between North and South, with the sole aim of stemming entry. The glue, one of the few, of the EU expected at the June vote.

*The article is part of the Pulse collaborative journalism project and was written by Alberto Magnani (Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy) and Lola García-Ajofrín (El Confidencial, Spain). Editing by Silvia Martelli (Il Sole 24 Ore), contribution by Ana Somavilla (El Confidencial, Spain).