10,000 migrants in three days
Lampedusa – for the Italian government, this is the Germans’ fault
By Udo Gümpel, Rome
September 17, 2023, 10:29 a.m
The small Italian island of Lampedusa is only around 100 nautical miles from the North African coast. Meanwhile, masses of migrants are arriving there again in small wooden boats. This is a consequence of the measures taken by the Meloni government – but they are blaming the Germans.
For the Italian Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, the matter is clear: Who is to blame for the fact that 10,000 migrants landed on Italy’s southernmost island, Lampedusa, in three days? The Germans, because – according to Salvini – they pay for the rescue ships of the aid organizations and they drag the “illegals” into Italy. It is true that there are three NGO rescue ships in the Mediterranean whose mission is to rescue shipwrecked migrants and that these are financed with donations from Germany, including the Protestant Church with a donation of 100,000 euros. What is wrong, however, is that these NGO ships only brought one of the 10,000 migrants to Lampedusa on the second weekend in September.
The Italian government tells the NGO ships exactly which ports they have to take migrants to: They are always far in the north, and they often have to travel more than 1,000 kilometers. The long distances make rescue operations in the Mediterranean extremely difficult for the helpers. The ulterior motive is clearly visible: the rescue ship is initially out of action for ten days. Rome’s right-wing government could not ban rescue at sea because that would violate international conventions. But making it de facto impossible: that’s possible. One of the first measures taken by Giorgia Meloni’s government was to require its fleet of rescue ships, which can accommodate hundreds of shipwrecked people, to be mostly in port. According to the government, this heavy hand will prevent the “invasion by illegals.”
But the opposite of a stop happened: Instead, the refugees got back into small and tiny wooden boats and crossed the 100 nautical miles from Sfax to Lampedusa using their own means. Even during the largest wave of migrants to date in 2014, when 170,000 migrants landed throughout Italy, only just under 4,000 refugees arrived in Lampedusa throughout the year. Because all the others had previously been caught at sea and then taken directly to large Italian ports.
They come back with their own boats
The images of an overflowing hotspot reception camp on Lampedusa in the Imbriacola Valley are the direct effect of the right-wing government’s political decision in Rome to stop any kind of rescue operations in the sea. Now they are coming again, like in 2011 with the first wave from Tunisia, with their own boats. Almost everyone has set off from Sfax, where the price of a boat has dropped dramatically. A ten-person boat with an outboard engine is available there for 3,000 euros. There are practically no metal fishing boats anymore.
For the Meloni government, the images from Lampedusa are a disaster. During the election campaign she sold the NGOs as the guilty “smugglers”. They are now de facto eliminated, but the number of migrants has already doubled compared to the Draghi government.
The government’s course has also backfired diplomatically. Meloni flew to Tunisia in July to make a deal with the head of government there, Kais Saied: The country should prevent migration, in return Tunisia should receive one billion euros in urgently needed financial aid from the IMF, as well as 300 million euros from the EU for future solar energy the desert. But the opposite happened: departures from Tunisia increased massively. Not only Africans from sub-Saharan countries who have already immigrated to Tunisia want to move on to Europe, but also many young Tunisians.
In terms of domestic policy, Meloni and Salvini are now playing the anti-European, especially anti-German, card again: Europe is not helping, “the Germans” are to blame for everything. It may work on Italian television, now under full control of the Meloni faithful. But it clashes with the facts. According to the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Germany has so far taken in more than 1,700 people seeking protection – around 1,000 of them from Italy. The Dublin Agreement also means that Italy will take back people who have already submitted an initial application in Italy and are apprehended in Germany. Italy should have taken back around 4,000 asylum seekers, but is refusing. Germany remains cautious for now. The federal government is probably not sure whether it should give Italy a hand or whether it should insist on the letter of the Dublin Agreement, according to which Italy should take back the first-time asylum applicants, who are referred to there as “Dublinees”.
Accusations against Germany
Another graphic is never shown to the Italian audience: This year, of the 120,000 arrivals in Italy, only 60,000 have applied for asylum, while in Germany a total of 240,000 have already applied for asylum. But in Italy too, it is gradually dawning on government politicians that, beyond the propaganda of a “black invasion” organized by Germany, no EU country can solve the problem alone. If even an agreement with Tunisia that has already seemingly been finalized is not worth the paper it was written on, then that shows the dimension of the problem: the poorer and more devastated the south of the world becomes, the more refugees will come looking for rescue, for some food. Just like many of the almost starving refugees on Lampedusa who climb over the fence of the reception camp to finally get their fill from the hospitable Lampedusa residents.
Italy has already taken a first, concrete measure to deal with the wave of refugees: the arrivals on Lampedusa were no longer processed for identification purposes, there were no photos and no fingerprints. They were given a colorful wristband and taken ashore. This means that they are not registered by the European asylum authorities – they are “virgins” from an asylum perspective – and can submit an “initial application” anywhere in the EU. Nobody is then allowed to send them back to Italy because they don’t officially come from Lampedusa.
Meloni follows up
Italy’s government is in panic mode. During the elections, the right-wing parties promised an absolute stop to the “invasion”. Instead, now new record numbers. Lega boss Matteo Salvini called for “the deployment of the Italian Navy”. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni followed up in a TV commercial on Friday evening: Anyone who comes to Italy illegally will be held in a closed camp for 18 months instead of the previous 12 months and then sent back again. The government will decide this by decree next Monday, she announced.
Nobody in Rome knows how sending people back will work if they can’t even convince a “friendly” head of government like Tunisia’s president to take their own compatriots back. Or when thousands of migrants come from Egypt, a country with which Italy has good relations, or from Pakistan. The government in Rome’s latest idea to deal with migration is a European military mission in the Mediterranean to ensure security. Strange. This joint European military operation under the name “Sophia” already took place from 2015 to 2019. It was ended at Italy’s request.