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French President Emmanuel Macron is visiting Italy on Wednesday (September 18th) to calm relations between the two countries, which have been harmed in recent months.
Emmanuel Macron is the first foreign leader to be welcomed in Rome since the establishment of the Conte II government . This was one of the priorities of the French president, Paris wishing to revive a " good cooperation " with the Italian authorities after the turbulence of the Salvini period.
In the entourage of the Head of State, however, we take care to explain that this appointment is part of the European agenda of Emmanuel Macron and especially that it is not intended to wear a " judgment "on the political debate in Italy and the departure of Matteo Salvini from the government.
This debate belongs to the Italians, they say at the Elysee. Emmanuel Macron wants to avoid giving arguments to the opponents of Giuseppe Conte who accuse his coalition government of being a kind of " creature " directed from the outside, in other words from Paris, Berlin and Brussels.
Emmanuel Macron still hopes to take advantage of the new political context in Italy to advance on economic and budgetary issues. Regarding the deficit, for example, the two men could agree to join their efforts to try to obtain more flexibility from the supporters of the hard budget rigor.
But the French president also hopes to advance on the subject of migration. The dossier has been a source of tension between the two countries , the former Italian Minister of the Interior and head of the League (far right) Matteo Salvini has repeatedly accused the head of the French state of " arrogance " and " hypocrisy " in the matter. On this eternal subject of discord, progress seems today possible.
Distribute asylum seekers
Italy, supported by France, wants to impose a system of automatic distribution of asylum seekers rescued in the Mediterranean. The issue will be discussed next Monday in Malta by EU interior ministers. This device would be temporary, pending the renegotiation of the European regulation of Dublin claimed for years by Rome. " It will not be easy," warned Giuseppe Bettoni, professor at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. The Hungarians have already spoken against it. They would like to have even bigger walls. "
Sign of a shift in Italian policy, a humanitarian ship with 82 migrants on board was allowed to disembark on the island of Lampedusa late last week. With the departure of Matteo Salvini, the eternal subject of friction between Paris and Rome could well turn into an attempt to find common solutions.
On the humanitarian side, SOS Méditerranée welcomes " the sign given by Italy of its return to the European negotiating table ". Fabienne Lassalle, Deputy Director General of the NGO expects a lot of the meeting in Malta, where she hopes that " a landing system can be defined that is predictable and coordinated " so as to no longer have to undergo " ad hoc solutions " which " Lead to having to wait for weeks with survivors on board who are tired, exhausted, have already experienced the horror ". The NGO hopes that other signals will come "to turn the page of this disastrous sequence in the Mediterranean towards something operational, functional ".