THE French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanen called a meeting, which will take place this afternoon, on the “immigration situation” in Lampedusaher little island Italy which faces record arrivals of immigrants, while it will have communication with its counterparts in Italy and Germany.

More than 7,000 migrants from North Africa arrived on Tuesday and Wednesday in Lampedusa, one of the main gateways to Europe, a number equal to the population of the island, which was declared in a state of emergency.

The meeting will take place in the afternoon with the participation of “the competent services” of the police, gendarmerie and immigration, according to the interior ministry.

In addition, Darmanen will “convers” during the day “with his counterparts in Germany and Italy”, the ministry pointed out, noting that a new meeting on the matter will be held tomorrow morning.

During his visit to Mendon on Tuesday, Darmanen had announced that efforts to stop irregular migration would be stepped up at France’s border with Italy, where Paris is seeing a “100% increase in flows”.

The minister has not yet clarified whether France will follow the decision of Germany, which announced on Wednesday the suspension of the voluntary reception of asylum seekers from Italy, as provided for in the European treaties, because of “the great migratory pressure” and the refusal of Rome to implement these treaties.

In Lampedusa the migrant reception center designed to accommodate fewer than 400 people is overcrowded, with men, women and children forced to sleep outdoors on makeshift beds covered with blankets.

More than 5,000 migrants arrived on Italian shores on Tuesday, most of them in Lampedusa, while nearly 3,000 more landed on the island on Wednesday, according to Italy’s interior ministry.

This is an “absolute record”, according to Matteo Villa of the ISPI institute.

The second-in-command of the French far-right Reconquete party, Marion Marechal, spoke yesterday Thursday of “an immigration flood, which unfortunately has just begun”, announcing that she would visit Lampedusa.

Today French MEP Raphael Glicksman, of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, asked Paris to “offer a European solution” so that “solidarity mechanisms” would allow it to lighten Italy’s burden.