France “will not welcome migrants” from the Italian island of Lampedusa, decided this Tuesday evening Gérald Darmanin, guest of the 8 p.m. news on TF1. A concise and clear statement, which puts an end to speculation around the decision of the French executive, whether or not to help Italy cope with the significant migratory influx that the country has been experiencing on its island for several days. The Minister of the Interior insisted on the government’s “firmness” in this matter, which he had already underlined on Italian soil the day before.
“France wants a firm position,” he insisted on the TF1 set. The case of asylum seekers, for example for political reasons, is of course different, also admitted Gérald Darmanin, who however minimized their presence among the migrants disembarked in Lampedusa.
“It is not by welcoming more people that we are going to dry up a flow which obviously affects our integration capacities,” he continued. And the minister added: “On the other hand, we told our Italian friends that we were ready to help them to return people to countries with which we have good diplomatic relations”, citing Côte d’Ivoire and the Senegal.
Gérald Darmanin was speaking the day after a visit to his transalpine counterpart in Rome, while Italy is facing a significant acceleration in the arrival of migrants on the island of Lampedusa, located between Tunisia and Sicily.
Between last Monday and Wednesday, around 8,500 people, more than the entire population of Lampedusa, arrived aboard 199 boats, according to the United Nations migration agency.
This situation has put the island’s reception capacities under great strain, generated a political shock wave in Italy and relaunched the thorny question of European solidarity in terms of reception and distribution of asylum seekers, for support countries on the front line of these arrivals.
On the subject of asylum seekers, Gérald Darmanin admitted that it was necessary to “distinguish” their situation from that of the majority of migrants, while returning this responsibility to the Italian authorities. “If people are eligible for asylum, (if) they are persecuted sexually, politically, religiously, obviously it is the duty of France like other European countries to welcome them,” he acknowledged.
But he downplayed the presence of asylum seekers among Lampedusa’s migrants, saying the majority of them were not fleeing persecution. “They’re not Afghans, they’re not Syrians,” he insisted.
The minister also announced that he had decided to “strengthen” controls at the Franco-Italian border: the number of police and gendarmerie dedicated to this task will increase from 500 to 700, he further clarified on Tuesday. evening.
