It is the rush to Lampedusa. On this Italian island where irregular migrants regularly flock, the situation has become explosive. The head of the Italian government, Giorgia Meloni sounded the alarm.
More than 11,000 people have arrived since Monday in Italy, including the majority on this island of 6,500 inhabitants, according to the Italian Ministry of the Interior, more than the population of the island. The town declared the state of emergency and tensions broke out on Wednesday during the distribution of food by the Italian Red Cross.
The migrants continue to arrive on the island and according to the Red Cross, there were still, Friday morning, 3,800 people in the reception center or around, which always exceeds six to seven times the capacity of the site.
The head of the Italian government, Giorgia Meloni, said on Friday, having written to the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to invite her to come to Lampedusa and realize the situation herself.
“The migratory pressure with which Italy has been confronted recently, in particular on its islands closest to Africa, has become unbearable (…) more than 11,000 arrivals were recorded during the first half of September, most from the Tunisian coast,” she said.
“Massive illegal immigration cannot be suffered by Italy and Europe as a fatality to which it is necessary to resign itself,” she continues, calling for “the fight against the activities of human traffickers, in particular by cooperating with the authorities of North Africa and continuing in the direction that we have already taken together”.
“For these reasons, I think it is very useful and important that you can come to Lampedusa in the coming hours to personally assess the situation and give a concrete solidarity and support signal from the European Commission to the island itself and to Italy,” insists Giorgia Meloni.
In particular, it calls Ursula von der Leyen to accelerate the implementation of the memorandum of understanding between the EU and Tunisia.
