“A vulgar insult. On Friday May 5, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani demanded an apology from French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin. The day before, the latter had pointed out Rome’s inability to manage the migration crisis. “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 Antonio Tajani in a daily interview. Corriere della sera.
On Thursday, the head of diplomacy canceled his first visit to Paris, where he was to meet his counterpart Catherine Colonna, after statements by Gérald Darmanin on RMC accusing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of being “unable to resolve the migration problems on which she was elected.”
Catherine Colonna quickly posted a message in Italian on Twitter, saying that “the relationship between Italy and France is based on mutual respect, between our two countries and between their leaders”, calling out Tajani in the process. “Catherine Colonna called me twice, to tell me she was sorry, she was very cordial”, assured Antonio Tajani, while considering that the explanations of Paris remained “insufficient”.
“This is a cold attack, a stab in the back from a senior member of the French government. There are things that cannot be ignored. The rest of Macron’s executive, however, certainly does not think like Darmanin,” insisted the Italian minister.
For its part, Paris tried to calm things down, without denying the differences. “There was no desire from the Minister of the Interior to ostracize Italy in any way whatsoever and I reassure the Italians who are watching us,” government spokesman Olivier Véran explained on the set of the CNews channel, wishing “not to make a political story out of it”.
“We continue to work with the Italians,” said Olivier Véran. “The Italians, we argue, they love politics, but they own the choices they’ve made and they want to be left to own their choices,” he explained, “and that’s good because we have no intention of doing otherwise”.
“I think that very soon this incident will be behind us, because France needs Italy too much and Italy needs France too much on all subjects, and particularly on the question of immigration,” said added Budget Minister Gabriel Attal on BFMTV-RMC radio.
?? “Very quickly, this incident will be behind us because France needs Italy too much and Italy needs France too much” ? @GabrielAttal, Minister Delegate for Public Accounts, reacts to Gérald Darmanin’s comments on Giorgia Meloni pic.twitter.com/I4bqjBw6mA
More nuanced, the Minister of Transport Clément Beaune gave “political reason” to his colleague from the Interior who recalled “what the far right is everywhere, in Italy as elsewhere, which makes a lot of promises and solves few problems”. On the migration issue, he said on Europe 1 radio, “there is no solution that is not European”. “We can see that whenever there is a temptation to go it alone, whatever the country, it doesn’t work,” he said.
Immigration has been an extremely sensitive subject in Franco-Italian relations for years. In November, the two countries experienced a strong outbreak of fever when the Meloni government, barely in power, refused to let a humanitarian ship from the NGO SOS Méditerranée dock, which ended up being welcomed by France in Toulon with more 200 migrants on board. The episode had angered Paris, which had called a European meeting so that this unprecedented scenario did not happen again.
Since then, clandestine boat crossings have increased with the development of a new maritime corridor between Tunisia and Italy, on the front line at the gates of Europe. According to the Italian Interior Ministry, more than 42,000 people have arrived via the Mediterranean in Italy this year compared to around 11,000 over the same period in 2022
