“The French far right takes the Italian far right as a model. Their incompetence and impotence must be denounced. Meloni makes a lot of demagoguery on illegal immigration: its policy is unjust, inhumane and ineffective“. Thus the head of the party of Emmanuel Macron Renaissance, Stephane Sejourne, quoted by Le Figaro in an article on the crisis between Italy and France entitled “Despite their differences, Meloni agitated as an anti-Le Pen bogeyman by the government”. “Message that the MEP plans to repeat on May 25 in Rome, where he organizes a seminar of the Renew group in support of the Democratic Party”, we read.
Le Figaro summarizes the goal of the minister’s words Gerald Darmanin – who sparked the crisis between Rome and Paris last week – with “attacking Giorgia Meloni to put Marine Le Pen in trouble”: “At the risk of irritating a neighbor of France, Macron’s camp makes use of Italy’s nationalist leader as a new bogeyman anti Rassemblement National (Rn). Useful, one year before the 2024 European elections, in view of which the allies of the head of state imagine relaunching the duel between a ‘centre bloc’ and a ‘nationalist bloc’.
Le Figaro devotes two pages to the issue of the influx of migrants at the Italy-France border and to the French border protection strategy. “Against the background of a diplomatic crisis between the two countries – writes the newspaper – reinforcements have arrived in Menton to deal with an ever stronger influx of illegal immigrants”. Recalling that “42,000 migrants have arrived in Italy since the beginning of the year, against 11,000 in the same period last year”, Le Figaro writes that “this record influx is a source of strong tensions between France and Italy. They escalated into a diplomatic crisis last week, when Gérald Darmanin told Rmc that the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is ‘incapable of solving migration problems’.
In the reportage from Menton, Le Figaro describes the French device to curb the influx of migrants in France: “A dozen vans of the mobile forces are lined up in front of the border post, proof that the reinforcements promised by the government have arrived”. These are “two companies of police officers and two squadrons of gendarmerie”, for a force of “400 men, counting the reservists and soldiers of the Sentinelle force, who take turns day and night at the border to prevent the entry into France of foreigners in an irregular situation”.
“From 1 January – writes the newspaper – according to a balance drawn up on 4 May by the prefecture of Maritime Alps, 9,737 foreigners in an irregular situation were subject to a ‘non-admission’ procedure. This means that they were handed over directly to the Italian authorities after being stopped. It is a third more than last year in the same period. Another 2,870 foreigners were arrested in the rest of the department, outside the border area. It is 70% more than in the same period of 2022 and clear proof that the device, despite all the means deployed, remains permeable”.