Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Giorgia Meloni

  • Meloni’s Asylum Plan Gains Support

    Mark Rutte Giorgia Meloni
    Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands is received by Giorgia Meloni of Italy in Rome, March 8 (Palazzo Chigi)

    Giorgia Meloni may get her wish.

    When the Italian conservative party leader, since elected prime minister, proposed to fund asylum centers in North Africa, she was called a xenophobe by the left in her own country and abroad.

    Now it is part of a tentative EU agreement to manage asylum applications, which are approximating the records of 2015 and 2016.

    European migration ministers have agreed that transit countries like Tunisia could be paid to shelter asylum seekers. The same countries would need to take back illegal migrants who crossed the Mediterranean Sea by boat.

    Such boats regularly capsize, killing an estimated 1,200 migrants last year.

    Ministers also discussed trade sanctions for countries that do little to stop irregular migration. (more…)

  • Giorgia Meloni Sets Out Her Program

    Mario Draghi Giorgia Meloni
    Outgoing Italian prime minister Mario Draghi poses for photos with his successor, Giorgia Meloni, in Rome, October 23 (Palazzo Chigi)

    Giorgia Meloni has set out her program in an inaugural address to the Italian parliament.

    The far-right party leader, who won the election a month ago to become Italy’s first woman prime minister, was sworn in by President Sergio Mattarella on Sunday. She leads a coalition of three right-wing parties.

    She gave the top posts in her cabinet to centrists:

    • Finance: Giancarlo Giorgetti, a member of Matteo Salvini’s far-right League. Was minister of economic development under Mario Draghi.
    • Foreign Affairs: Antonio Tajani, the former president of the European Parliament and a member of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia.
    • Interior: Matteo Piantedosi, a former civil servant without party affiliation. Salvini had hoped to return to Interior, but was given Infrastructure. (Queue jokes about the far right making the trains run on time.)
    • Justice: Carlo Nordio, a 75 year-old former prosecutor who investigated corruption in Italy’s once-dominant Christian Democracy party in the 1990s. Belongs to Meloni’s own Brothers of Italy.

    Meloni’s speech was also reassuring. In place of the fiery culture-war rhetoric of her campaign came sensible proposals for family policy and immigration, empty gestures on climate policy and the environment, and firm commitments to the Atlantic alliance, EU and Ukraine. (more…)

  • Meloni’s Plan for Asylum Seekers Makes Sense

    Giorgia Meloni
    Brothers of Italy party leader Giorgia Meloni makes a speech in Cagliari, September 2 (Fratelli d’Italia)

    Giorgia Meloni’s call for a “naval blockade” of illegal immigration across the Mediterranean Sea has got plenty of attention, but the likely future prime minister of Italy has another, more humane idea: create European asylum application centers in North Africa, so migrants — many don’t qualify for asylum — don’t attempt a futile and perilous sea journey.

    Italy receives an unusually high (for Europe) share of asylum seekers from safe African countries: Ivory Coast, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Tunisia. Unless they fear persecution in their home country for their political beliefs, religion or sexuality, those asylum seekers are usually sent back.

    That doesn’t mean they leave. Immigration authorities don’t have the manpower to escort every rejected asylum seeker back home. Some countries refuse to take their people back. A share — we don’t know how many — remain in Italy illegally. Others try for asylum in another European country.

    Since illegal aliens cannot legally work, many end up either exploited or as criminals, and often homeless. (more…)

  • Right-Wing Parties Win Italian Election. Turnout Lowest in 100 Years

    • Right-wing parties won the election in Italy on Sunday.
    • Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the largest right-wing party, Brothers of Italy, would become the country’s first woman prime minister.
    • She would lead the first right-wing government since Silvio Berlusconi stepped down in 2011, and the most right-wing government since the end of World War II.
    • The elections were called when Prime Minister Mario Draghi lost the confidence of parliament in July. He did not run for reelection.
    • All 400 seats in the Chamber of Deputies and 200 elected seats in the Senate were contested.
    • Turnout, at 64 percent, was the lowest since Benito Mussolini rigged the election of 1924. (more…)