After last week’s coup in Niger, several European countries including Italy have started organizing to evacuate their citizens from the country. On Tuesday morning, the French Foreign Ministry recommended French citizens in Niger to leave the country, albeit without imposing it, and also offered citizens of other European countries to leave on French planes. The German government has invited German citizens – less than a hundred, according to the Foreign Ministry – to accept the French invitation. The first French plane left at 4 in the afternoon (Italian time) from Niamey, the capital of Niger.
Even Italy has not imposed obligations for now, but Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani he said to have offered Italians in Niger the possibility of returning to Italy with a special flight. Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said on Monday that there were “a hundred” Italians in Niger. Even the Spanish government he started the evacuation operations of Spanish citizens, about 70 in the country, but did not give further details for security reasons.
France is the European country that has the closest ties to Niger, above all due to a very harsh colonial regime imposed in the country and maintained until the beginning of the twentieth century, which contributed to generating the current situation of instability in the country. For this reason it is also the country that has the most citizens in Niger: last year there were about 1,200, according to the French Foreign Ministry, but at the moment they would be about half because many are reportedly spending the summer elsewhere.