He said in a press release: “When you make reckless promises and you’re a member of the far right, you realize reality is harsher.”
On May 4, the minister triggered a diplomatic crisis between France and Italy by claiming that Giorgia Meloni was “unable to solve the immigration problems on the basis of which she was elected”.
While Italy awaits an apology from him, Gérald Darmanin indicated on Wednesday that the Italian Prime Minister had, for his part, “greatly offended the President of the Republic”, Emmanuel Macron. He found the immigration issue “difficult to resolve” and said that “we have the right to say that Mrs Le Pen, Mrs Meloni, do not have the right model”. He stressed that “far-right solutions don’t work” in this regard.
After his first controversial statements, Rome’s reaction to this attack was immediate: the head of Italian diplomacy, who was to arrive in Paris to meet his counterpart Catherine Colonna, immediately canceled his visit.
“It is an unjustified and vulgar insult addressed to a friendly and allied country. When someone offends another in an unjustified way, the minimum is that he apologizes,” Tajani said in an interview with the press.
Faced with the escalation, Paris tried to calm things down and sought to quickly “reschedule” the visit after the Foreign Ministry claimed that bilateral relations “are based on mutual respect between the two countries and between their leaders. “.
Darmanan’s words came in response to a question about the positions of the leader of the far-right National Rally party, Jordan Bardella, regarding the immigration file on the border between France and Italy.
His answer was that there is indeed an influx of immigrants, especially minors, in the south of France, blaming Italy for this, saying: “The truth is that there is a political situation in Tunisia which pushes a large number of children to cross Italy, and the latter is unable to cope with this pressure from immigrants.
The roots of the crisis
Political scientist Emmanuel Depuy considers, in his statement to “Sky News Arabia”, that this diplomatic crisis is deeper and more complex than it appears on the surface, and its roots go back first to the incompatibility of the two political systems. existing in both countries.
He explains: “There is a difference in terms of ideologies. Italy’s government is made up of an alliance of far-right parties, which reminds Macron of his rival Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front party. an old discontent on the French side about the way and the approach with which Italy is dealing with the immigration file. Being on the front line, she has been in a difficult situation in recent weeks with the strong pressure of immigrants arriving.
Even if relations between France and Italy, marked by an annual summit since 1982, have become governed by the cooperation treaty known as the Quirinal Treaty, which the two countries signed in November 2021 in Rome. However, the two neighboring countries, according to the political analyst, “failed to download its provisions and activate cooperation agreements due to the different approaches”.
Frequent disagreements
He evokes this tension in the relations between two partners and two neighbors across the Alps, at another very tense stage under the era of the previous populist Italian government, which reached the measure of Paris recalling its ambassador to Rome in 2019, when the The then deputy prime minister of the Italian government met with members of the “yellow vests” movement who were organizing violent protests against Macron in Paris. And due to anti-French statements by Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right “League” party, Paris has decided to close the land border with Italy.
After the situation had calmed down and the waters had returned to normal, immigration returned to poison relations after the Meloni government, which had just come to power, refused in November 2022 to authorize the humanitarian ship “Ocion Viking “, which was carrying more than 200 migrants, to dock in an Italian port, obliging France to possibly welcome them in Toulon. Meloni got rid of the pressures she was exposed to and referred the case to Paris, which expressed its anger at the incident and called for a European meeting so that this unprecedented scenario did not happen again.
Immigration… a constant source of tension
Since then, clandestine boat crossings have multiplied with the development of a new maritime corridor between Tunisia and Italy, so much so that the immigration file continues to fuel tensions between the two parties in the absence of an effective solution to this thorny issue.
Since the beginning of the year, according to the Italian Ministry of the Interior, 42,400 migrants have arrived on the Italian coasts, compared to 11,200 in 2022 over the same period. About half of them come from French-speaking countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Tunisia, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mali).
And “that’s why the tensions between the two countries are so strong”, explains Mireille Damiano, a lawyer and human rights defender who specifically defends the rights of unaccompanied children.
In her interview with Sky News Arabia, she confirmed that there has been an increase in the number of migrants crossing the Italian border into the French mainland, due to the high number of ships loaded with migrants arriving at Italian ports.
Despite the long-standing European debate on the need to distribute immigrants across European countries and reduce the burden on receiving countries, this demand has not been met due to the refusal of most governments. This is why the files of illegal immigrants arriving in Italy are processed on its soil, and due to the growing pressure on it and the rise of the extreme right, the conditions have become dire and have prompted immigrants to complete their journey to France. Not necessarily for the purpose of staying there, but in most cases it is considered a transit station to Germany, England or other neighboring countries.
To tighten the noose at the border, security reinforcements have been deployed on the French side of the geographical border as well as at the other crossing points where surveillance operations are systematically carried out.
However, Mireille Damiano believes that “the internal laws of France and the dictates of the laws of the European Union dictate in Paris the need to welcome minor migrants in good conditions and to receive asylum applications at the Italian borders” . It’s not always the case. .”
The crisis will break out
It seems that this crisis is not in the interest of both parties due to several considerations. “Italy needs a key partner like France,” he said.
In this regard, the political analyst states: “Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom constitute the four allied European countries that are members of the Group of Seven industrialized countries. The Italian economy is rather prosperous at the same level as France. The crisis of 2008 and the crisis caused by the Corona epidemic in 2021 made the two countries more united with an important mobilization during the two phases to mitigate the negative impact.
On the security front, “France remains in need of Italy due to tensions in its relations with Germany and the difficulty of linking security and defense relations with Great Britain after its exit from the EU. ‘European Union”.
Thus, Depuy believes that Europe must create a strategic diplomatic pole in the south of the continent, but there are not many partners in the region.
You can count on Spain, Portugal and Greece, but Italy is the third economic power in Europe, and when relations with Berlin become strained, Rome is the place to turn. However, the immigration crisis has made it difficult to implement this system.
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