The head of Italy’s right-wing and far-right government, Giorgia Meloni, assured on Friday that the migratory pressure her country is under due to the daily arrival of thousands of migrants is “unsustainable” and called on the European Union to respond.
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“The migratory pressure that Italy has been experiencing since the beginning of the year is unsustainable. She is the child of a difficult international situation in Africa,” she said in a video message broadcast by her services.
Ms. Meloni was responding to the situation on the Italian island of Lampedusa, less than 150 km from the Tunisian coast and one of the first ports of call for migrants crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe.
The situation on Lampedusa has never been so tense. According to the Interior Ministry, in recent days the majority of the 11,000 migrants who have arrived on Italian territory since Monday have arrived there, overloading the reception center managed by the Italian Red Cross (CRI), which has a capacity of 400 places.
Ms. Meloni also estimated that “tens of millions of people” in Africa may want to leave their countries due to coups or famines, and considered it “obvious that Italy and Europe cannot absorb this enormous mass” of migrants.
She turned again to the EU and called on it to respond quickly and decisively.
She wrote to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, inviting her to come to Lampedusa and see first-hand the situation, which is constantly improving thanks to the numerous transfers of migrants to the continent.
She also called on European Council President Charles Michel to put the migration issue on the agenda of the EU summit in October, while announcing that his government would take extraordinary measures.