The latest report of the European Border Guard Frontex is clear: between January and November of this year, immigrant arrivals in Italy, compared to 2023, decreased by 60%. The immigrants and refugees who arrived in Calabria, Sicily and Apulia did not exceed, in total, 64,000. 92% left by boat from Tunisia and Libya.

Despite the evidence and all this trend, it is clear that the Meloni government has “invested” in the strict line on immigration. Despite its many efforts, the two closed detention centers for irregular immigrants that it created in Albania remain empty. The Italian judiciary has not validated the decisions of temporary detention of asylum seekers so far and the matter has now passed to the Court of Justice of the European Union. It will have to decide – by next Spring – whether the Meloni government’s measures take into account the principle of the “safe country of origin” for immigrants and refugees.

Renzi: “To transfer 2,000 Albanian prisoners to the centers in Italy

At the moment, in these two centers of Sangin and Giander in northern Albania, one meets only Italian policemen and carabinieri. An Albanian TV report, which was reported in detail by the press in Rome, showed that the Italian policemen are currently taking saunas in the luxury hotel where they are staying, going on trips to Durrës and Tirana and at night, sometimes, dancing in discos. They don’t have, essentially, an object of work.

At the same time the Italian former prime minister Matteo Renzi in his proposal he underlines: “for these two centers in northern Albania, the Italian government spent about 800 million euros, but it is clear that the whole plan collapsed. Let us at least use them to transfer there the approximately 2,000 Albanian prisoners who are in Italian prisons.”

The Meloni government’s right-wing alliance does not intend to take a step back. This is proven by the latest statements of the president of the senate, Ignazio La Russa, who was – for a number of years – an executive of the party of the Italian prime minister. “This is a model that is being studied and applied in many parts of the world”, he characteristically said and suggested that, in order to overcome “technical and legal problems”, the relevant law should be amended.

Rome, in other words, does not abandon its hard line on immigration. A line which forced Doctors Without Borders to suspend their rescues with the ship Geo Barents in the central Mediterranean. “Our decision is due to unimaginable laws that lack any logic,” the NGO underlined, referring to measures and decisions by the Italian Ministry of the Interior, which placed new restrictions on rescuers from humanitarian organizations.