(AP) Five European Union nations on the Mediterranean who fear possible waves of refugees driven by hunger out of Africa called Saturday for an end to the EU’s “voluntary” solidarity on migrants and a better way to redistribute the burden of caring […]
(Reuters) Mediterranean countries on major migrant routes into Europe expect over 150,000 arrivals this year as food shortages caused by the Ukraine conflict threaten a new migration wave from Africa and the Middle East. “This year the frontline member states are expected, […]
(AFP) Italy’s top diplomat Luigi Di Maio discussed clandestine migration with Tunisian President Kais Saied on Tuesday, in his first visit to the North African country since the president’s July 25 power grab. The foreign minister praised Tunisian efforts to stem the […]
(AFP) Italy’s former interior minister and far-right leader Matteo Salvini went on trial Saturday for allegedly illegally blocking over 100 migrants in dire sanitary conditions from disembarking from a rescue ship. On the opening day of the trial in Palermo, Judge Roberto […]
(AP) A rusty, overloaded fishing boat carrying 686 people docked on the island of Lampedusa in the single biggest arrival of migrants in Italy in years, amid new diplomatic efforts by Mediterranean governments to seek more European help in handling migrant flows. […]
(Reuters) A Somali asylum-seeker was arrested by Italian police after he allegedly stabbed four women and a six-year-old child in the tourist town of Rimini on Saturday night, ANSA news agency reported on Sunday. Investigators were for the moment ruling out terrorism […]
(Arab News) Officials from the Italian Ministry of the Interior in charge of migration policies expect 30,000 migrants to arrive from Libya by the end of 2021, part of a total of 70,000 expected to reach the coasts of Sicily from the […]
(AFP) An Italian judge on Wednesday dropped the case against a German captain arrested for forcibly docking her ship with migrants on board, the NGO that operates the vessel said. Carola Rackete was arrested in June 2019 after guiding the Sea-Watch 3 […]
(AFP) Italy is pushing EU partners to revive migrant burden-sharing deals as it seeks to stave off a summertime surge in landings from North Africa, Prime Minister Mario Draghi said Wednesday. Migration has returned to the top of the political agenda in […]
(Politico) Rome is facing pressure to abolish its offshore quarantine system for migrants and refugees following a series of alarming incidents, including several deaths, over the past year. Since May, the Italian government has isolated asylum seekers on ships after they arrive, […]
(AP) Italy and France are considering deploying sea or air craft to alert Tunisia to the departure of clandestine boats ferrying migrants north to Italian shores, like the young Tunisian man who is the chief suspect in a fatal knife attack at […]
(AP) The 21-year-old Tunisian behind the attack that killed three in a Nice, France, church had small-time run-ins with the law as a teen, but nothing that alerted Tunisian authorities to possible extremist leanings. That missing red flag meant that when he […]
(ANSA) Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese on Friday rejected opposition calls for her to resign because the Tunisian man who killed three people in Nice Thursday landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa last month. Lamorgese said it was time to “stop the […]
(AFP) An Italian judge reviewing charges against far-right leader Matteo Salvini that he illegally detained migrants at sea delayed the hearing until November 20 so he could hear from senior members of the government, including Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. Salvini made no […]
(AFP) Italy has no more room for illegal migrants, its foreign minister Luigi Di Maio said Monday on a visit to Tunisia, from where many of them cross the Mediterranean Sea. After a meeting with the Tunisian President Kais Saied, Italy’s top […]
(AP) The number of migrants reaching Italy by sea shot up from the previous 12-month period, but in contrast to recent years, the majority of the arrivals didn’t need rescue and made it to shore by themselves. According to Interior Ministry figures […]
(AP) About 250 Tunisian migrants in several small boats have reached a tiny Italian island that has run out of room to quarantine them as required by Italy’s anti-coronavirus measures, local officials said Saturday. The Sicilian newspaper Giornale di Sicilia quoted Lampedusa […]
(AFP) Out in the Mediterranean, under a baking sun, fisherman Ezio Billeci comes across a boat of vulnerable migrants and calls for help, but for hours the only response he gets from Italian authorities is to “stand by.” The episode off the […]
(AFP) Italy’s interior ministry on Wednesday said it was finding the migrant situation “much more complex” than in previous years, and was upping returns to Tunisia as it struggled to house new arrivals. “The coronavirus emergency and the consequent very serious economic […]
(AP) More boats carrying Tunisian asylum-seekers reached a tiny southern Italian island Monday, part of a steady stream from the economically struggling North African country that is sorely testing Italian small town mayors’ ability to stop them escaping by the hundreds from […]
(AP) Italy on Saturday expelled a Moroccan imam back to his home country because of what it said was his support for the Islamic State group. Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese cited reasons of state security in sending the 41-year-old imam, identified only […]
(AFP) Italy’s new Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese said in an interview published Friday that there was no migrant “invasion,” countering statements by her hardline anti-immigration predecessor Matteo Salvini. Lamorgese told the Repubblica newspaper that this year 9,600 migrants and asylum-seekers had arrived […]
(AP) A large majority of European Union member countries have refused to back a plan to quickly get migrants off boats in the Mediterranean Sea and distribute them among willing EU partners. At a meeting of EU interior ministers, only Ireland, Luxembourg […]
(Reuters) Interior ministers from five European Union countries said on Monday they had agreed a new scheme to distribute migrants saved from the Mediterranean in a deal aimed at relieving the pressure on southern EU states. The plan will be presented to […]
(AFP) Italy on Saturday allowed rescue ship Ocean Viking to disembark 82 migrants on Lampedusa, in a reversal of the hardline policy under the country’s ex-interior minister Matteo Salvini. Far-right leader Salvini was forced out of office last month after bringing the […]
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