The Italian government, chaired by the far-right Giorgia Meloni, has decreed the state of national immigration emergency for the next six months, after the disembarkation on the Italian coasts of more than 3,000 people in the last three days, the local media reported on Tuesday. The measure, at the proposal of the Minister of Civil Protection and Maritime Policies, Nello Musumeci, and with an initial financing of five million euros, will be implemented throughout the national territory due to the exceptional increase in the flow of migrants through the Mediterranean routes. .

The declaration, which was approved by a Council of Ministers, comes after a conversation held this Monday between Musumeci and the Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi, and which was confirmed to Efe by Interior sources. “We have gladly adhered to Piantedosi’s request, well aware of the seriousness of a phenomenon that increases by 300%. Let’s be clear, we are not solving the problem, whose solution is only linked to a conscious and responsible intervention by the European Union,” Musumeci said.

The measure, which “allows the repeal of some rules of the current system”, “will be national” because they need to “help the regions because there is a risk of sending the system to collapse if this rate of arrivals continues”, he added, although he has insisted on the importance of Europe “realizing that there is no much time”. “If we intervene in the countries from which we move, neutralizing the mafia of traffickers, perhaps we can avoid the worst,” Musumeci emphasized. In the same vein, the Vice President of the Government and leader of the sovereignist League, Matteo Salvini, had stated a few hours before, when assuring that Italy is “absolutely incapable” of managing “a thousand daily arrivals” of migrants and that “it is crucial that Europe wake up and intervene”.

31,000 people arrived in 2023

“He’s been chatting for years, but he has never lifted a finger, and it is time to show that there is a community, a Union, and that solidarity is not only the responsibility of Italy, Spain, Greece or Malta. Because a thousand arrivals a day we are absolutely incapable of supporting them economically, culturally and socially,” he said. More than 3,000 migrants have arrived in Italy in the last few hours of intense activity for the Italian coast guard, which has rescued numerous boats in distress this weekend in the Central Mediterranean.

In two complex and long operations, still not finished, the Coast Guard intercepted on Monday two ships in which they were traveling 800 and 400 people in waters close to Sicily and Calabria (south), which have been added to the nearly 2,000 people that the Italian authorities had already rescued in other operations since Friday.

“If Europe is there, since we are net contributors of billions of euros a year, It’s time to prove it because we can’t do it alone”, Salvini said, explaining that it is necessary “at least a repatriation center for each region“. Arrivals in Italy have exceeded 31,000 since the beginning of 2023, almost four times more than the close to 8,000 in 2022, with 3,002 migrants in the last three days, and a record 1,389 last Friday, April 7.