The attempt is to make the NGOs forget the war, the management of the Cutro shipwreck, the promises of naval blockades and closed ports, the broken slogans with the reality of increasingly numerous landings that not even the sovereign right is capable of containing. Opening the international conference on migration in La Farnesina on this muggy Sunday morning, Giorgia Meloni Above all, he insists on these slogans: cooperation, partnership, funds for development, humanitarian corridors.
These are concepts that naturally serve, in the government’s intentions, to limit incoming flows. The problem, if anything, is who are the interlocutors with whom to manage these files: the guest of honor of the day, let’s say, is the Tunisian president sayingprotagonist of an illiberal turn in his country and center of harsh criticism also for the management of immigrants who come to the Tunisian coasts.
Meloni addresses an audience that only photographs converging interests, but also bitter competitions between subjects who simply don’t get along. There are, for example, the heads of the Commission and the European Council, Ursula von der Leyen AND charles michael. The former, in particular, is spending heavily on maintaining a liaison with the Italian prime minister, which could contribute to her re-election as head of the Commission in 2024. On the other hand, there are no major Mediterranean partners such as France and Spain – so far governed by leaders certainly not in tune with the Italian right – while the Cypriot president is present among others. As for the Greeks, they sent the Migration Minister, while the Turks at the last moment preferred to confirm the presence of the Foreign Minister and not erdoğan (perhaps also because of the position of the Chigi Palace in the file of Ankara’s entry into Europe).
The fact is that most of the attention is paid to Saied. Meloni meets him before starting work (this is the fourth face-to-face in less than two months). And from the Tunisian leader he receives the usual approach that mixes accelerations and warnings: “It’s the beginning of a journey,” he says. Unless he later adds: “We will not have stability if there is no justice and if we do not seek solutions to the causes of this injustice, of this human tragedy of migration.” Tunisia awaits European funds and asks to release those frozen by the International Monetary Fund.
Doing the honors is antonio tajani. It welcomes all the leaders who step on the Farnesina. North African countries are represented, but also potential investors from the Gulf. Also in this case, the level of assistance indicates between the lines who really believes in the Italian Mattei Plan and who, instead, prefers other collaborations. Among the main exponents stands out Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyanat the head of the United Arab Emirates, the Libyan leaders and the prime ministers of Egypt, Ethiopia, Algeria, Niger, Jordan and Lebanon.
The “Rome Process”
For the rest, it is worth noting the already consolidated change in the language and arguments of Meloni, the result in the first place of the failure of the promise to block the landings: since he sat in the Chigi Palace, also due to the instability of the regions of origin of the flows and of the transit countries (in particular Tunisia and Libya), arrivals have experienced a sharp increase.
For this reason, Meloni bets everything on the Mattei Plan – which in fact happens to be called the “Rome Process” – and promises a “dialogue between equals” between the countries bordering the Mediterranean. He reaffirms the need for legal migration and a tough fight against illegal trafficking. And finally, he sends a signal to Europe: “Supporting refugees and displaced persons is a duty that no one can evade. Those who flee from wars and disasters have the right to be saved. But this right cannot automatically lead to the right to be welcomed everywhere. A duty of solidarity is, therefore, to increase financial support to those who are hosting a greater number of refugees”.
A message that the prime minister must direct mainly to her conservative partners on the continental right, led by the Poles, hostile to the economic solidarity mechanism designed by Brussels for the maritime border countries.
