The crisis in the relations between France and Italy brings the refugee issue back to the forefront of current affairs

France’s decision to welcome – willingly or not – the 340 shipwrecked migrants picked up last month by the ship Ocean Viking in the central Mediterranean from a humanitarian point of view it was certainly correct and imperative, but at the same time it once again brought the EU to the brink of a crisis, the root of which lies in the long-standing inability of its member states to deal effectively with refugees.

Having now transferred the rescued to a guarded military base, where in the first phase they are provided with the necessary medical services and in the second phase it will be examined which of them are entitled to asylum, the French authorities are now openly accusing the Italian authorities of “irresponsibility”. Paris accuses Rome of obstinately and improperly refusing for twenty days to allow the Ocean Viking to dock at an Italian port and of essentially “pushing” it into French territorial waters,thereby forcing France to welcome its now exhausted passengers, some of whom were in immediate need of medical attention. The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, spoke of behavior that will have “strong effects” on the bilateral relations of the two states and “legal continuity”, while the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Catherine Colonna, told the newspaper Le Parisien yesterday that the Italian methods “are unacceptable”. .

The French side has already announced the first “retaliations”, which are the intensity of border controls with Italy and the cancellation of the reception of 4,000 refugees who are in Italy and who, based on European agreements, should have already been transferred to France. From the Italian side, the French reactions are characterized as “incomprehensible” and “disproportionate”. The Meloni government was quick to “thank” the French government for its intention to welcome the Ocean Viking, even before Paris hinted that it had a similar intention. Something that of course did not facilitate the consultations between the two countries, where in one the extreme right is in the government and in the other it is lurking. The French far-right now openly accuses President Macron of giving in to the blackmail of the ruling Italian far-right, calling the Ocean Viking the Trojan Horse of the migrant invasion of France.

Given this, the center of the future consultations cannot be any other than Brussels, where the management of migration is once again rapidly entering the foreground of current affairs, with the first and urgent request being the implementation of what was agreed in June (and not carried out) for the reduction of the shores of the EU states that are “on the front line”, i.e. in the Mediterranean. Regarding the radical treatment of the issue, Emmanuel Macron took care to point out, speaking on Friday at the Paris Forum for peace, that if there is no international cooperation to fight the causes that create migration flows “we will continue to spend time and energy to deal simply with the symptoms of the phenomenon”.