The distance clash between Paris and Rome continues. Antonio Tajani, the head of Italian diplomacy, demanded this Friday May 5 an apology from Gérald Darmanin, after the remarks of the French Minister of the Interior, on RMC, on the inability of the President of the Italian Council Giorgia Meloni to manage immigration.
“It’s a gratuitous and vulgar insult addressed to a friendly, allied country” and “when someone gratuitously offends another person, the minimum is that they apologize,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs to the daily Il Corriere della Sera.
Antonio Tajani canceled Thursday evening his first visit to Paris, where he was to meet his counterpart Catherine Colonna, after statements by Gérald Darmanin. Immigration has been an ultra-sensitive subject in Franco-Italian relations for years. L’Express takes stock of the figures illustrating this migration crisis.
More than 40,000 arrivals in 2023
According to the Italian Interior Ministry, more than 42,000 people arrived via the Mediterranean in Italy in 2023, compared to around 11,000 over the same period in 2022. “Since the beginning of the year, we have had a flow at the Franco-Italian border which has been roughly multiplied by four”, clarified this Friday on BFMTV Benoît Huber, cabinet director of the Alpes-Maritimes prefecture. “This corresponds to the volume of landings on the Italian coasts, more than 42,000 since the beginning of the year, and we find with a little delay these migrants who arrive in Menton.”
Also according to figures from the Italian Ministry of the Interior, more than 100,000 migrant arrivals took place on the Italian coasts in 2022 (104,061), half of them from Libya. This figure is higher than the total for the previous two years. On December 31, 2021, the ministry announced that 67,040 migrants had landed in Italy in 2021, compared to 34,154 in 2020. The year 2016 had been marked by a record number of 181,436 arrivals.
About 3,000 migrants arrived in three days
Between April 7 and April 10, 2023, around 3,000 migrants reached Italy, according to the NGO EuroMed Rights. About 1,700 of them have arrived on the Italian island of Lampedusa, whose hotspot suffers from overcrowding problems. On April 10, the Italian Coast Guard said it had rescued around 2,000 people in two days. Several shipwrecks were recorded between April 7 and 8 between Tunisia and Italy.
Nearly 450 migrants have died this year
According to the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM), the first quarter of 2023 was the deadliest for migrants in the Mediterranean since 2017. Indeed, 441 migrants died or went missing between January 1 and March 31. attempting to cross the Mediterranean.
According to the IOM, the first quarter of 2023 was the deadliest for migrants in the Mediterranean since 2017, with 441 migrants dead or missing between January 1 and March 31.
© / Paz PIZARRO, Valentin RAKOVSKY / AFP
This figure had reached 742 over the same period in 2017. The year 2016 had been the deadliest, according to IOM figures: 5,085 migrants perished in the Mediterranean that year.