Migratory emergency, the plan to boost repatriations arrives

The Italian government does not intend to wait for its European partners to fulfill their commitments on the issue of immigration and start collaborating. The arrivals boom registered in the first five months of the year (50,405, 155% more than in the same period of 2022) requires us to do it ourselves. For this reason, the Ministry of the Interior, led by Matteo Piantedosi, intends to give a concrete boost to repatriations with both the countries of departure and those of transit willing to collaborate. Viminale’s plan follows four main lines: the strengthening of the CPR (Retention Centers for Repatriation) where a series of revocations are under way against the cooperatives that they have been in charge of managing in recent years; simplification of return procedures; increase in personnel strictly dedicated to this task; bilateral agreements with a “reward” system for “collaborating” countries. An instrument to be rewarded, for example, is the flow decree, which allows the regular entry of migrants, especially from those States that demonstrate their cooperation both in repatriation and in combating irregular immigration.

So far we have seen a tiring back-and-forth in Europe. What is concrete is the fact that Giorgia Meloni managed to force the European Council to take the matter seriously. It did so at the summit last February, when the EU Commission undertook to formulate a set of proposals for the protection of external borders and also to give new impetus to repatriations. Times, however, are long. As the Swedish Presidency has reiterated several times, the horizon is to reach an agreement in 2024. Obviously, we cannot expect much with thousands of migrants disembarking on the coasts of Sicily and Calabria every day. French President Emmanuel Macron recently declared that, on the issue of immigration, “Italy can no longer be left alone”. Words appreciated by Palazzo Chigi, but which coincide with those spoken a few days earlier by the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, who accused the Italian government of being “incapable” of solving the problem of migratory flows.

In fact, EU countries continue to move without a well-defined direction. The Swedish presidency, which is preparing to hand over command to Spain, recently proposed compensating the border states (Italy is one of the main ones, if not the main one) with 22 thousand euros for each migrant not relocated among the European partners. It is a demonstration of the unwillingness to take care of the refugees who land on the Italian coast. The Swedish commitment, however, has already registered opposition from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Italy is also opposed, as Piantedosi explained after the call with his Austrian counterpart three days ago: “Our country does not support any hypothesis of relaunching the mechanism of “relocation” (relocations, ed) in view of the failure of the agreement reached by the previous government last June, nor of forms of economic compensation, considered equally unsuccessful”. Negotiations at the European level will only proceed with the blocking of departures and the increase in repatriations, continues the note – it is aimed above all at “through the reinforcement also at the European level of the bilateral collaboration relations already assumed by Italy”, explains the Keep them in All this will be discussed at the Justice and Home Affairs Council scheduled for 8 and 9 June in Luxembourg.

Currently, most migrants arriving in Italy depart from Tunisia (25,937 in the first five months of 2023), followed by Libya (22,462), Turkey (1,769) and Algeria (237). But the countries of origin, with which it is hoped to reach effective agreements, are others: Ivory Coast (7,380), Guinea (5,996) and Egypt (5,478). It is significant that only 3,431 Tunisians arrived in Italy on January 1st.