The Italian Prime Minister received the full support of the President of the European Commission on Sunday regarding the EU’s aim to work with African countries to stop the networks of human traffickers that promote illegal immigration in the Mediterranean.
“It has become a lucrative business model for organized crime. They commercialize dreams and human lives. We must end this cynical business model,” the European leader said in a speech in Rome, quoted by the EFE agency.
The Italian capital today hosted a meeting between leaders and representatives of multilateral organizations to promote the migration reform of Italy’s far-right leader, Giorgia Meloni.
The call, billed as the “International Conference on Development and Migration,” leveraged the presence in Rome of numerous leaders from the UN Summit on Food Systems, which begins next week at the headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
“We are connected by the Mediterranean. But cooperation between the north and south, east and west of the Mediterranean has not always been the norm. We want to change this approach,” said the European leader.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, agreed with Meloni when she defended a synergy between migration policies and European Union (EU) funded development projects: the countries receiving aid are committed to strengthening the borders and, in turn, the economic impetus in the countries of origin would prevent the exodus of people.
In this sense, he stated that after “ending” its dependence on Russia, the EU now looks to Africa as the main supplier of clean energy: “The whole region has natural resources such as sun, wind and immense landscapes in abundance”.
For this reason, he asked Europe and Africa to create a “new strategic association” “based on economic and human development, trade, investment and migration management”.
A few minutes earlier, Meloni answered anti-immigration rhetoric linking it to development projects: “A lot has been said about the right to emigrate, but we also need to talk about the right not to migrate, not to abandon our home and family.”
The Italian Prime Minister spent months promoting an Italian investment program in Africa called the “Mattei Plan”, of which few details are known, and continued to strengthen ties with Algeria and Tunisia initiated by her predecessor Mario Draghi.
For his part, von der Leyen highlighted the Global Gateway programme, the EUR 300 billion investment program with which the EU aims to counter China’s influence in developing countries.
Source: DN
