Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has called a meeting for Friday to address the ongoing migration crisis on the island of Lampedusa in Italy.
Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has called a meeting on the Italian migration situation for Friday, BFMTV learned from his office. An initiative that follows the events in Lampedusa.
The small Italian island is facing the arrival of several thousand migrants from North Africa this week.
The island’s reception center, built to accommodate fewer than 400 people, was overwhelmed. The Italian Red Cross (CRI), which manages the center, is “doing the impossible, more than the impossible,” its president Rosario Valastro responded in a press release on Thursday.
An “absolute record”
Good weather conditions have pushed exile candidates to sea in recent days: more than 5,000 people landed on the Italian coast on Tuesday, almost exclusively in Lampedusa, and on Wednesday there were almost 3,000, according to the Interior Ministry. According to Matteo Villa from the think tank ISPI, the number of arrivals within 48 hours is an “absolute record”.
The municipality of Lampedusa declared a local state of emergency and tensions arose during the CRI’s food distribution on Wednesday.
Reinforcements on the French-Italian border
According to the European agency Frontex, irregular arrivals of migrants across the Mediterranean from North Africa in Italy totaled almost 114,300 between January and August, almost twice as many as in the same period in 2022.
In July, in the presence of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the EU signed a partnership with Tunisia to reduce the number of migrants arriving from that country and provide aid worth hundreds of millions of euros. This agreement sparks controversy due to the authoritarian tendencies of the Tunisian power and the abuses committed in that country against sub-Saharan migrants.
At the beginning of the week, Gérald Darmanin announced reinforcements in the fight against illegal immigration at the border with Italy during a press conference Visit to Menton (Alpes Maritimes).
Francois Blanchard from AFP