Fight human trafficking and illegal landings. Giorgia Meloni’s Italy leads the European Union in Africa on immigrants. She does this by initiating the “Roman Process”, which aims to strengthen the “equal” dialogue and cooperation between Mediterranean littoral North African countries and landing sites like ours and Greece.
The springboard is the International Conference on development and migration, highly coveted by the Italian government, today, 23 July, in Farnesina, Rome. The executive, led by the Brothers of Italy, is still successful after, according to him, a memorandum of understanding signed last week in Tunisia by Tunisian President Kais Saied with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Meloni and the now-resigned Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte.
Giorgia Meloni as Angela Merkel
Prime Minister Meloni insists on some clear mottos: cooperation, partnership, development funds, humanitarian corridors. And he does this by saluting various leaders and heads of state, who, as in the past, still wear medals of autocracy and human rights violations around their necks. The presence of representatives of more than 20 states around this table demonstrates the friendship between our nations and the awareness that each of us has to face these great challenges.” The conference was attended by the leaders of almost all the states on the southern coast of the expanding Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Gulf, the first port countries of the EU and some partners of the Sahel and Horn of Africa, the heads of European institutions and international financial institutions.
“This is the first time Mediterranean countries are meeting on these issues,” says the prime minister, happy to create a role that is very reminiscent of the role played by former chancellor Angela Merkel in 2015 when she signed the agreement with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the management of Syrian refugees.
Head of a sovereign government, Meloni addresses an audience of delegates representing different interests, hoping that “partnership” with the immigrants’ countries of origin will therefore be “equal”. Hoping to take action against the “root causes” of migration, the Italian government’s strategy is to promote economic development through partnerships in six sectors: agriculture, energy, infrastructure, education-training, health, water-hygiene.
“Supporting refugees and displaced persons is a duty that no one can escape. Those fleeing wars and disasters have the right to be saved. But this right does not automatically entail the right to be welcomed everywhere. The duty of solidarity is therefore to increase economic support to those who find themselves welcoming more refugees.”
“Mass illegal immigration – once again underlined by Meloni – harms everyone”. But “Even before states, all this concerns people, because at the center of migration flows are first and foremost people: lives, hopes, fears, sufferings”. Thus, since taking office at Palazzo Chigi, Meloni tries to hide the failure of her promise to stem the rising migration flows, as well as the instability of the migration’s origin and transit countries, especially Tunisia and Libya.
Scene given to Autocrat Saied
But the difficulty of seeking a common dialogue is masked by the understanding that the prime minister met with Tunisian President Kais Saied, the anticipated guest of this international conference, before work began. The Tunisian leader has nothing short of: he is the hero of an illiberal turn in his country and is at the center of heavy criticism of the management of immigrants. But above all, he has a stage at his disposal before the head of the Commission von der Leyen and the head of the Council of Europe, Charles Michel, who are the heads of the European institutions, to launch an offensive against colonialism, which, according to Saied, was the cause of immigration.
However, the Tunisian leader does not forget the humanitarian organizations that “unfortunately do nothing and are content with making statements that have no value”. But add this: “If there is no justice, if we do not seek solutions to the causes of this injustice, this human tragedy, we cannot achieve stability.”
Words that contradict what is happening on the Tunisian borders, where every day hundreds of sub-Saharan migrants struggle against the violence of police forces or try to survive in the Libyan desert. The North African country, which signed a memorandum of understanding with the EU last week, is waiting for European funds and wants those frozen by the International Monetary Fund to be released. Thus, Saied relaunched a new International Monetary Fund, which “can be financed by loans, stolen money after cancellation, to lay the foundations for a new human system to create hope and well-being for all.”
“The agreement with Tunisia is a model”
For this reason, the message that Saied wrote to von der Leyen and that “a successful model of cooperation for all” is needed for this, took as an example the agreement signed by Brussels and Rome with Tunisia last week. Von der Leyen therefore models a memorandum whose text is very general and speaks of “economic and trade cooperation”, “an integrated approach to migration” and “removal of the root causes of irregular migration”.
For the EU Commission president, “The Rome Process is an opportunity for team building: a new forum for better understanding each other, identifying mutual interests and needs, and finding mutually beneficial solutions”. Apart from that, “new strategic partnerships for development and climate between Mediterranean coasts” should be restarted.
Europe now has to invest in clean energy after ending its dependence on Russian fossil fuels due to the occupation of Ukraine. “We will produce clean energy in Europe,” explains von der Leyen, but we will also need to import clean energy from abroad. Clean electricity generation in the EU costs 10 cents per kilowatt hour at best. It can cost up to two cents in Tunisia.” The key point is: “Tunisia will have a huge competitive advantage, with the necessary natural resources like plenty of wind and sun. This is a classic win-win situation: Europe has to do with investing in Tunisia and Tunisia has to do with improving its domestic consumption and export capacity.”
At the end of the studies, there was no final document to trace the coveted and heralded equal partnership that Meloni spoke of. With anti-democratic regimes or divided countries like Libya, we understand much less how to manage immigration.
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Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.