BRUSSELS. Immigration and migrants, for Italy and the Meloni government, an endless story that needs to be tackled urgently to resolve it once and for all. A priority pursued with renewed vigor, which has produced a clash and a rift with France. The majority of the Brothers of Italy-Lega-Forza Italia makes it a question of landings and arrivals, which also recur, but Eurostat data helps to understand what the reasons of the others are at present. It’s not the landings, but the asylum requests. Since the beginning of the year, from January to September, the number of non-EU citizens who have applied for international protection weighs on EU states other than Italy.
Germany, France, Austria and Spain. They are the countries most burdened with questions that clog offices, prefectures and public institutions. The European Statistical Institute has detailed numbers, which show how throughout 2022 Italy was less and less burdened than the other partners.
In January, the first reception requests were 15,830 in Germany, 9,985 in France, 7,675 in Spain, 4,460 in Italy e 3.175 in Austria. Therefore the German authorities had to manage three times the requests filed in Italy, the French ones more than double the Italian ones. The trend hasn’t changed. Or rather, starting from June the requests in Austria also became more than those in Italy, and from June onwards Italy confirmed itself as the fifth EU member country by number of non-EU citizens to request international protection.
Eurostat releases updated data in August. Here the special classification for first asylum applications reads as follows: Germany 16,950; Austria 14,030; France 11,900; Spain 8,650; Italy 5,985. But there are also the September data, incomplete to the extent that not all Twenty-seven have communicated the information. But even here, despite a non-overall figure, it is possible to see how the weight of asylum applications has not changed. As of September 2022, applications for first asylum register these numbers: Germany 18,715; Austria 15,490; France 13,500; Spain 11,000; Italy 7,920.
These numbers do not help an already difficult confrontation on an issue that is always divisive and a source of tension between governments. Italy has asked and obtained that the migration issue be brought to the European table, but the Italian reasons, which are well founded, clash with the reasons of the partners who can cite the data to argue that the emergency is not Italian. Of course, the Meloni government can use these same data to reiterate that the issue is European, but the same partners have factual elements available that debunk the Italian rhetoric of exaggerated pressure on the national authorities. In short, the data released by Eurostat risk making the debate on the subject even more heated.