Meloni admits she is not "satisfied" with her handling of immigration

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has acknowledged that she is not satisfied with her government's management of migration, after disembarkations increased by more than 2023% in 50 and 157,000 migrants arrived in the country, a figure not seen since 2016. "I don't think the results on immigration are satisfactory, especially compared to the amount of work I've put into this issue. However, I think that if I hadn't, things would have been much, much worse," she said at the year-end press conference held on Thursday, in which the prime minister answered questions from journalists for just over three hours.

The meeting with the press, as is traditional, was to be held at the end of December to take stock of the year, but was postponed twice due to health problems of the head of government. Meloni has insisted on the migration issue and has assured that it will continue to be a priority issue for her Executive. "If you ask me if I'm satisfied today, I say no, but I do think I will be at the end of this legislature. I'll keep working on it, it's one of my priorities," he said. She added: "I am somewhat more satisfied with the figures for the latter part of the year, which show a decline compared to the first part. I know more was expected in this, I'm willing to take responsibility."

It is common for the number of arrivals to fall in the last months of the year due to unfavourable weather conditions, with fewer boats loaded with migrants taking to the sea on African coasts. 2023 has been a complicated year for Italy in terms of migration. Meloni had won the election a year earlier promising a crackdown and a drastic drop in arrivals and instead saw a considerable uptick in landings, the likes of which had not happened for a long time. In September, the island of Lampedusa was on the brink of collapse with the arrival of more than 7,000 migrants in just a few days.

The far-right leader announced in November as a star measure the installation in Albania of centers to welcome those disembarked in Italy, but less than a month later the Albanian Constitutional Court overturned the initiative. The controversial agreement that the EU signed with Tunisia to stop the exits, with Meloni as mediator, is also frozen in practice.

The pressure on Italy, which in recent years has dismantled its reception and integration system, remains high. "It's a very complex job. Immigration is the challenge of our time, we are trying to solve the problem in a long-term and structural way," the prime minister said. "Things are starting to change, I'm confident I can do more," he added. And he celebrated the fact that the traditional demands of his party, Brothers of Italy, are now part of the debates in the European Union, such as "the need to work in Africa and stop departures there", he said, without commenting on the new migration pact that the EU closed a few weeks ago.

The Italian prime minister has once again proposed the idea of setting up centres in Africa for migrants, "to assess there who has the right to come to Europe and who does not". And he has defended the Mattei Plan, a series of agreements with various African countries, which also include alliances in energy matters and which, among other things, would serve to curb outflows. Meloni has been working on them for months, but they haven't quite gotten off the ground.

Meloni touched on numerous topics at the press conference. She has also announced that she has asked her party, Brothers of Italy, which she founded and led, to suspend MP Emanuele Pozzolo, who is under investigation for firing his pistol that wounded a man at a New Year's Eve party. "I have asked that Pozzolo be referred to the arbitration commission of Brothers of Italy, regardless of the work done by the competent judicial authority, and that, pending trial, he be suspended," Meloni said.

Complaint against Pozzolo

Shortly after that announcement, it became known that the man who was slightly wounded in the leg, the son-in-law of an escort of the Undersecretary of Justice, Andrea Delmastro, also present at the party, filed a complaint against Pozzolo for having shot him. The deputy has acknowledged that the bullet came from his gun, but has denied that he pulled the trigger. "Deputy Pozzolo has a gun permit for his self-defense and was carrying one on New Year's Eve. Whoever owns a gun has a legal and moral obligation to carry it responsibly and seriously. And that's why there's a problem with what happened, because it shows that someone wasn't responsible. If that applies to any citizen, even more so to a parliamentarian and even more so to a member of Brothers of Italy," said the head of the Executive.

Meloni has also defended her decision to abandon China's New Silk Road, President Xi Jinping's flagship program to increase its influence in the world, which Italy had joined in 2019 under Giuseppe Conte's government. "I made the decision about the Silk Road out of consistency with what I think. We were the only G-7 country to be part of it. The results obtained convinced me even more of my decision, the trade balance had become more and more unfavorable for Italy. It has helped to bring many more Chinese products into Italy. Maximum reciprocity was guaranteed, which does not yet exist, as the European Commission says, so I am afraid that has not worked. In my opinion, politically it was not correct and economically it was not effective," he said.

And she stressed that bilateral relations with China have not suffered: "I will go to Beijing as soon as possible at the invitation of the Chinese president. Other agreements can be made, relations are excellent, there is no punitive or distancing attitude. We need to reactivate relations with China and also encourage Chinese investments, which can be interesting."

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