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ROME – They arrived in quick succession, a flotilla of rickety boats ferrying desperate migrants from the Tunisian coast across the Mediterranean. Within three days, their numbers — nearly 7,000 as of late Wednesday — had surpassed the total population of their destination, the small Italian island of Lampedusa.
Their sheer numbers have alarmed Italy and thrust the country’s first far-right leader since World War II into the spotlight. Last year, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni vowed during the election campaign to stop irregular migration, even if it required a European Union-led “naval blockade.”
But with the number of new arrivals in Italy rising to 123,800 so far this year – roughly double last year’s numbers and on track to match or surpass the 2016 record – Meloni has been criticized by both the political right and the Left criticized for not achieving its cornerstone promise.
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The surge on the southern island of Lampedusa – which declared a state of emergency late Wednesday – came despite a new agreement it negotiated with the Tunisian government aimed at blocking migrant crossings. At the same time, it is faced with new measures from Germany and France that want to prevent migrants from leaving Italy.
“The Meloni government has failed across the board when it comes to migration,” Pietro Bartolo, an MEP from the opposition Democratic Party, said on his Facebook page. “The many metal boats that have landed in Lampedusa in recent days all left Tunisia, the country with which the Italian government… signed a memorandum.”
Pressure is growing within Meloni’s coalition to take more aggressive steps, but observers say it has few good options. Despite her campaign promises, Meloni’s Italy has refrained from using the more aggressive tactics seen in other frontline countries such as Greece, where the coast guard has faced intense criticism – including over its handling of a distressed migrant ship that sank in June, causing hundreds of deaths .
“The point is that acting aggressively means what? What can she do? It is one thing to call for a naval blockade when you are in opposition. But you can’t actually do something like that,” said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute for International Affairs. “All Italy can do is hope to convince other European countries to shoulder more of the burden.”
Images broadcast on national television on Wednesday showed Italian police using plastic shields struggling to contain the crowds of desperate migrants in Lampedusa. In the frenzy of a rescue operation, a five-month-old toddler drowned after his boat capsized, highlighting the escalating humanitarian challenge.
Lampedusa was also at the forefront of Europe’s last major refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016 – when its warm welcome of migrants earned it global recognition and sparked a campaign to award the island the Nobel Peace Prize. But changing migration routes have meant arrivals in Lampedusa this year far exceeded the 2016 record. Officials there now say the 7.8-square-mile island of 6,000 people is completely overwhelmed.
On Thursday, Italian coast guard ships struggled to move thousands of migrants from the only refugee shelter in Lampedusa, built for 400 people, to larger accommodation in Sicily.
“It is the defeat of Europe, a system that… never implements a real and true migration policy,” Lampedusa Mayor Filippo Mannino told the Italian press on Wednesday. “Here we are all tired and exhausted, both physically and mentally. The situation is becoming uncontrollable and untenable.”
The increased numbers are due to several factors, immigration officials said. For one thing, bad weather – partly linked to Storm Daniel in the Mediterranean, which claimed thousands of lives in Libya – appears to have dampened refugee flows for days, leading to a rapid increase as soon as the skies cleared.
But Flavio di Giacomo, spokesman for the International Organization for Migration in Rome, said the key factor appeared to be the growing number of migrants arriving from Tunisia, which has overtaken Libya as the largest departure point for sea migration to Europe.
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Earlier this year, sub-Saharan migrants who had been in Tunisia for years began fleeing in greater numbers to escape a wave of racist attacks. More recently, di Giacomo said, they have been joined by more Tunisian nationals, as well as migrants – mostly Eritreans, Sudanese and Egyptians – who apparently crossed the Libyan border to travel to Lampedusa from the nearby Tunisian city of Sfax.
“This is quite new, never before have so many people come from Libya to Tunisia to come to Italy,” he said.
Despite expressions of solidarity from other European nations, however, Italy alone has borne the brunt of the new arrivals, Meloni and others argued here.
This week, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced that his country would strengthen its border with Italy to stem a surge in migrant flows and increase mobile units and security personnel.
Germany said on Wednesday it would suspend an agreement reached last year to accept migrants from Italy. Berlin blamed a surge in migrants arriving in Germany, coupled with the Italian government’s refusal to abide by a European agreement – the so-called Dublin Treaty – under which migrants can be deported to their country of first arrival within the bloc – which these days the case is Italy.
Meloni acknowledged Wednesday that Italy was not accepting returnees, arguing her country was too overwhelmed.
“For me, the core issue is not how do we move them away from one part [of Europe to another],” she said. “The only way to solve it for everyone is to stop [the migrants], stopping primary flows and therefore arrivals in Italy. And that’s what I’m working on.”
Migrant advocates claim Europe is better prepared for the arrival of migrants than it lets on, pointing to the more than five million Ukrainians who were quickly absorbed after the Russian invasion. Although Italy is nearing a record in arrivals, totals from across the European Union remain well below the peak of 2015, when nearly a million migrants – mostly Syrians fleeing civil war – fled to safety in Europe.
But as the numbers here skyrocket again, Meloni faces the prospect of the core of her refugee policy – an agreement with Tunisia’s authoritarian President Kais Saied to increase patrols and crack down on migrant exodus – costing millions to do so Receiving investment and aid from Europe has failed.
Members of their far-right coalition partner – the Lega – also appeared to suggest their efforts were unsuccessful. In an interview published on Thursday by the news agency affaritaliani.it, the league’s deputy secretary, Andrea Crippa, was asked whether Meloni’s strategy in Tunisia had helped prevent immigration flows.
“Looks like that’s not the case,” he said.
Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this report.