Macron meets Meloni in Rome amid tensions over migration

Issued on: 26/09/2023 – 17:00

1 min

The French leader was in the Italian capital to attend the state funeral of former president Giorgio Napolitano, who died on Friday aged 98.

A sharp rise in migrant landings to the Italian island of Lampedusa earlier this month reignited a bitter debate across the EU over who takes responsibility for asylum seekers.

There has been particularly heated rhetoric in France, where political parties in the country’s hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

“We cannot leave the Italians alone,” Macron said in a television interview on Sunday—an offer of help that Meloni immediately said she “welcomed with great interest”.

The two leaders last met in Paris in June, and are also both due at a summit of Mediterranean leaders in Malta on Friday.

Meloni has also clashed over migration with Germany, whose president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was also among those at Napolitano’s funeral.

The Italian premier wrote to Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the weekend to complain about Berlin’s funding of charity projects to help migrants either at sea or onshore in Italy.

Rome blames the NGO boats that conduct rescue missions in the central Mediterranean—the world’s deadliest sea crossing for migrants—for encouraging arrivals from North Africa.

But data shows they do not work as a so-called pull factor, departures are based on the weather not the presence of NGO boats, and the vast majority of migrants are rescued by the Italian coastguard, according to the interior ministry.

Napolitano was a former communist who became the first Italian president to serve a second term.

Renowned for his moderation and statesmanship, he was regarded as a guarantor of stability during a time of particular turbulence in Italian politics.

In office from 2006 to 2015, he was president during the premierships of Romano Prodi, Silvio Berlusconi, Mario Monti, Enrico Letta and Matteo Renzi.

Representatives from Albania, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Britain and the European Union were also announced among the guest list for the funeral.

Unusually for Italy, Napolitano had asked to have a non-religious ceremony, which was held in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies.

(AFP)