Italy’s right-wing government declared a six-month national state of emergency on Tuesday to help it deal with a surge in migrants arriving on the country’s southern shores.
State television said a special commissioner was expected to be appointed. Seed funding of 5 million euros (almost $5.5 million) was also approved as part of the move approved by Premier Giorgia Meloni and her cabinet.
In a statement after the cabinet meeting, the government said the state of emergency was deemed necessary “in order to urgently carry out extraordinary measures to reduce congestion” at an overwhelmed migrant shelter on a small Italian island in the Mediterranean.
There is also a need for “new structures, adequate both to house and to process and repatriate immigrants who do not have the requirements to stay” in Italy, the government statement said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy’s governing coalitions also imposed a state of emergency, allowing the Cabinet to order many coping measures by decree, temporarily circumventing the usually lengthy parliamentary process for funding and regulations.
“Let’s be clear, this does not solve the problem, the solution of which is linked to a conscious and responsible intervention by the European Union,” said the Minister of Civil Protection and Maritime Policies, Nello Musumeci, quoted by the Italian news agency ANSA.
Largely without success, Meloni’s government, like several others before it, has pushed for more solidarity from other EU countries, which often renege on their promises to take in some of the asylum seekers hoping to find family or work in Northern Europe.
Since the beginning of this year, some 31,000 migrants have disembarked, either rescued by Italian military ships or charity ships or arriving in Italy unaided, according to Interior Ministry figures. That’s nearly four times the roughly 8,000 for the same period in each of the previous two years.
Migrant arrivals, departing on unseaworthy boats launched by smugglers from the North African shores, look set to rise. On Wednesday morning, a smuggling ship, packed with about 700 passengers, was expected to arrive at the port of Catania, a major city in eastern Sicily.
Italian coast guard boats had been escorting the distressed fishing vessel towards shore when a breakdown forced it to be towed away, slowing its progress. The coast guard had already transferred about 100 of the passengers when rough seas made the operation too risky, and the decision was made to leave the rest of the migrants on board until the vessel could reach port.
On a recent day alone, 26 migrant boats, many of them without need for rescue, arrived at Lampedusa, a small Italian island south of Sicily. The Lampedusa center, which houses migrants so they can be provisionally identified as the first step toward any asylum claim, was reeling under the relentless stream of arrivals.
The shelter is meant to house about 350-400 people, but in recent days there were 3,000. Italy chartered empty commercial ferries to take hundreds of them to Sicily or the mainland.
On Tuesday, some 1,600 migrants were staying in the Lampedusa structure and authorities were waiting for the weather to improve so that some 400 could be transported off the island by afternoon.
“There are many women with small children, plus there are unaccompanied minors,” the director of the migrant center, Lorena Tortorici, told Italian television Sky TG24. “We are in an emergency situation. The staff is trying to do what they can.”
The largest number of immigrants arriving so far this year comes from the Ivory Coast, followed by people from Guinea, Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia and Bangladesh, according to the Interior Minister’s count.
For years, most of the smuggling ships plying the dangerous central Mediterranean route set sail from western Libya. But in recent months many of the trips have started from eastern Libya or from Tunisia. Another route starts from Turkey, with the aim of reaching Calabria or Puglia at the southern tip of the Italian mainland.
