“It is urgent to find solutions for EU border control”. In the “cordial” telephone conversation between the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, “the will was reaffirmed to guarantee full support to Ukraine and the urgency of identifying effective solutions at European level to support the competitiveness of European companies and to combat illegal immigration, through effective control of the external borders of the European Union”. This was announced by Palazzo Chigi, adding that the two leaders “have agreed to continue to discuss these widely shared issues”.
It is on the last point, immigration, that several frictions between Rome and Paris had been registered over the months, with the Italian government determined to continue the hard line on landings. The French were furious because, with an official note, Palazzo Chigi thanked Paris for its commitment to take care of the refugees from the NGO Ocean Viking. A commitment that had not been agreed upon at a diplomatic level and that the premier’s staff deduced from generic sources of the French Interior Ministry, cited in a news agency. The affair became a real diplomatic case between the two countries, with the spokesman of the French government, Olivier Veran, who had gone on TV to say that “Italy shifts the responsibility onto its French neighbors and friends”.