Elisabeth Borne called on Friday for a “peaceful dialogue” between France and Italy the day after Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin’s remarks on Rome’s inability to manage immigration, statements that sparked a new crisis. between the two countries.
The head of Italian diplomacy, Antonio Tajani, demanded an apology from Gérald Darmanin on Friday. The latter had judged the day before that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was “unable to resolve the migration problems on which she was elected”.
“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. Il Corriere della Sera, after having canceled his first visit to Paris on Thursday evening.
Asked Friday by the press about this request for an apology, Elisabeth Borne responded indirectly. “I would like to repeat that Italy is an essential partner of France, that our relationship is based on mutual respect, and that we will favor consultation and peaceful dialogue to continue working together,” she said. valorize.
The Prime Minister also recalled that the head of French diplomacy Catherine Colonna had been able to exchange with her Italian counterpart.
“Catherine Colonna called me twice, to tell me she was sorry, she was very cordial”, assured Antonio Tajani, while considering that the explanations from Paris remained “insufficient”.
“This is a cold attack, a stab in the back from a leading member of the French government. There are things that cannot be ignored. The rest of the Macron’s executive, however, certainly does not think like Darmanin,” Tajani insisted.
Asked by AFP, the French Ministry of the Interior did not wish to comment on the requests for apologies from the Italian government. On the side of Rome, Giorgia Meloni has still not reacted.
Immigration has been an ultra-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 allow a humanitarian ship from the NGO SOS Méditerranée to dock, which ended up being welcomed by France in Toulon (south ) with over 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.
However, nearly half of them come from French-speaking countries (Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Tunisia, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mali), according to figures from the Italian Ministry of the Interior.
“That’s why the tensions between the two countries are strong,” analyzed Friday the director of the French Office for Immigration and Integration (Ofii), Didier Leschi.
Asked about these frictions on the sidelines of a trip to Florence, the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell recalled that the question of migratory flows is “a common problem” in EU countries which must be managed “with the maximum of ‘unit”.
“I am sure that these difficulties will be overcome,” he said.
Next to the coronation of Naples in Serie A, the Italian press headlined Friday morning on this new quarrel between the two neighbors.
La Repubblica, a center-left daily, evoked “the slap in the face of Paris”, while La Stampa recalled that “the fight against illegal immigration had been one of Meloni’s hobbyhorses during the electoral campaign” in the summer of 2022 .
“But having just arrived at Palazzo Chigi [seat of the head of government in Rome], the Prime Minister had to take note of the infeasibility of her project. And the French repented of having believed in it”, writes the Turin newspaper .
05/05/2023 19:45:15 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
