Rome 9 August : Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the Italian populist party in the pre-elections, has stated that boats leaving the North African coast carrying migrants must be stopped at the sea. “The best way to solve this issue is to block the departures, not just the arrivals.The blocking of the departures is more effective,” dpa news agency quoted Meloni the chief of the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) as saying in an interview on radio on Monday.
According to polls Meloni’s political party enjoys the same level of support as of the League which is led by the right-wing populist Matteo Salvini, and Forza Italia, headed by the right-wing populist of former premier Silvio Berlusconi.
Three parties have come together to contest the elections on September 25 and the political forces of the left and in the center are in chaos.
Meloni and Salvini have made refugee and migration an important issue in their campaigns, since the number of refugees arriving from North Africa continues to be high.
The migrants are usually brought to shore by private rescue teams or by the Italian coastguard.
Meloni called for hotspots, or camps to be established in North Africa to check the migrants prior to their departure from the continent.
“We are certainly able to talk with the Libyan authorities about this,” she said.
In an opinion piece that has been criticized in the Corriere della Sera daily on Monday, Meloni contrasted the current surge of migrants entering Italy with Italians who emigrated to other countries in the past, stating that Italians were in seeking of work, while the current migrants were seeking to survive on the state.
According to the reports, Italy receives the majority of asylum seekers and refugees who arrive in Europe.
In the first six months of this year 27,633 refugees and migrants arrived in Italy via sea, compared with 20532 in the same time frame in 2021, as per statistics from the UNHCR.
In June 2022, 8,152 individuals were registered at landing sites in the southern part of Italy.This is a small decrease from May 2022 when 8,720 migrants and refugees landed on Italian shores.
The majority of those arriving in June departed in Sicily (6,625 people) then followed by Calabria (1,405), Sardinia (108) and Apulia (14).
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