Italy Wants More Money for Africa to Curb Arrivals in Europe
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Loading... - Sara Koopman
- 07 Feb 2023
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Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will ask European Union peers this week to give more money to Africa and create "European humanitarian corridors" to curb irregular immigration, a document showed.
The paper, seen by Reuters, lays out Rome's position for a Thursday-Friday summit of the 27 EU nations' leaders in Brussels to discuss increasing arrivals from the Middle East, north Africa and south Asia.
It called for a "more tangible commitment" by Europe "underpinned by meaningful financial resources" to work on everything from border controls to combatting human trafficking with countries along migration routes.
It also sought a new "Pact for Africa" to help investment, education, training, business and jobs around the world's poorest continent.
The summit has been convened after Austria and the Netherlands led complaints about increasing irregular arrivals.
The bloc's border agency Frontex reported 330,000 irregular border crossings last year, the highest since 2016 as global mobility restarted following the COVID pandemic.
The number is still a far cry from 2015 when more than 1 million people crossed the Mediterranean, risking their lives in unsafe dinghies and overwhelming the bloc.
DIVISIONS
EU countries fought bitterly over how to provide for those coming, and migration has since been a highly sensitive issue.
Higher immigration numbers have now revived ideas seen as inadmissible for years, from EU financing for border fences to handling asylum requests in centres outside the continent.
Last December, Austria cited migration concerns in blocking Bulgaria and Romania from joining the Europe's open travel zone called Schengen.
Meloni took her plan to EU capitals including Berlin ahead of the summit, though notably skipped Paris after locking horns with France over migration. Read More…
