BRUSSELS. Europe is not in the grip of migrants, it suffers minimal pressure and Italy even less. If on the one hand a certain politics tells of a situation out of control, fueling fears and tensions, on the other hand the numbers speak of an existing phenomenon but of limited scope at the moment. “In 2020, 417,185 asylum applications were submitted, equal to just 0.1% of the EU population”: Eurostat, with its latest yearbook of EU key figures, therefore deflates alarmism. There are arrivals, but not in the order of magnitude that lead to talk of emergencies.
A message to be delivered especially in Italy, where the exponents of the center-right parties continue to talk about a situation out of control. The European Statistical Institute clarifies that Italy is not the country most under pressure. In the ranking of the Member States, Italy ranks fifth in terms of the number of requests for hospitality and international protection, 21,200 in the past year. Less than those deposited in Greece (37,860), a quarter and even less than a quarter of those advanced in France (81,790) and Spain (86,385), and even a fifth of those registered in Germany (102,580).
It does not end here. In terms of concentration, there are fewer asylum seekers in Italy than elsewhere. The index that measures the situation in relative terms, i.e. the number of migrants per 100 thousand inhabitants, sees Italy in 15th place (36 questions), far from the numbers of Cyprus (845) and Malta (468 of Malta), first in the special ranking.
The Eurostat bulletin released in July and this time containing the 2021 data seems to confirm a situation in which Italy is less pressured than other partner countries. At the end of the first quarter there were 7,405 new applications for admission, about 40% less than those filed in Spain (12,465), practically a third of those presented in France (20,235) and a quarter of those sent to the German authorities. (27,985). Furthermore, so far the numbers have remained constant and tending to fall: at the quarterly level, the requests for asylum in the EU by non-EU citizens amounted to 126,030 in the third period of 2020, 124,760 between October and December, and 123,930 between January and March 2021.
The numbers provided therefore do not seem to indicate any invasion or crisis. This does not exclude the risk of a worsening of the situation, given that the background is the deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan and Belarus determined to use the draft of Iraqi refugees to put pressure on the EU. Without forgetting the failure of the Union and its governments in foreign policy efforts linked to migration issues. The Court of Auditors of the EU, in its freshly published report, denounces “inefficiencies in the cooperation” of the Club of Twenty-seven with third countries over the last five years. The external dimension, which focuses on repatriation and stops in transit states, is not actually working, given that “it has failed to guarantee the repatriation of migrants in an irregular situation”. So no crisis, according to Eurostat numbers. But the Court of Auditors turns on alarm bells.