(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 […]
(AFP) Italy said it has taken in the largest number of Afghans fleeing the war-ravaged country following the Taliban takeover, vowing “not to abandon” vulnerable groups after airlift evacuations end. Western nations are scrambling to get their citizens out of Kabul airport […]
(AFP) Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday pressed US allies to bring back citizens arrested overseas for joining the Islamic State group, warning they could not be held indefinitely in Syria. Blinken made the appeal in Rome at a meeting of […]
(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 […]
(AP) The head of the U.N. refugee agency on Friday said he has urged Italy not to unnecessarily impede NGOs that operate migrant rescue ships in the central Mediterranean, as warmer weather is expected to bring the usual seasonal uptick in the […]
(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, […]
(Reuters) Europe must rethink its open-border Schengen area, including a more robust protection of the zone’s external frontiers, President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday, after a spate of Islamist attacks in France and Austria. The tighter controls were needed to curb clandestine […]
(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 […]
(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 […]
(AFP) Italy has renewed a controversial agreement signed in 2017 with [the] Libyan coastguard to block illegal migrants trying to leave from the North African country’s coast, the government has said. Libya, wracked by conflict since the 2011 uprising that killed dictator […]
(Reuters) The European Union must introduce a new, automatic system of taking in migrants saved from the Mediterranean, the leaders of Italy and France said on Wednesday, as they sought to patch up bruised bilateral relations. Italy has long complained that it […]
(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 […]
(AFP) Talks between Italy’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party resumed on Saturday after a quarrel that had threatened to stop the nascent coalition in its tracks. Tensions remained however on the hot-button issue of migration, a highly emotive subject […]
(AFP) What was once Europe’s biggest migrant reception centre, in Mineo in Sicily, officially closed on Tuesday in the presence of its biggest critic, far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. “We’re saving quite a bit of money, we’re working to find new jobs […]
(AFP) The sign reading “Riace, land of welcome” still hangs in the small town, but its dream of migrant integration is over after the far-right’s “Italians first” election victory. The new mayor of the one-time “global village” in southern Italy’s rural Calabria […]
(AFP) The driver of a school bus who torched the vehicle to protest Mediterranean migrant deaths claimed on Friday he acted after hearing the voices of drowned children urging him on, media reports said. Insisting again that he did not want to […]
(AFP) Italy’s Senate voted Wednesday to block the trial of far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini for allegedly illegally confining migrants rescued at sea by an Italian coastguard ship last year. Senators voted 237 to 61 in favour of the immunity commission’s recommendation […]
(ANSA) A 47-year-old bus driver was held by Carabinieri police on Wednesday after allegedly hijacking a bus with schoolchildren aboard and subsequently setting it on fire after tying their hands with plastic clips in an apparent attempt to kill them, sources said. […]
(Reuters) A special tribunal has recommended that Interior Minister Matteo Salvini face trial for refusing to let 150 migrants disembark last year from a rescue ship docked in Sicily, the far-right leader said on Thursday. The court, which reviews investigations involving government […]
(AFP) The Italian Senate on Wednesday cleared the way for far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s tough anti-migrant and security decree to become law following a confidence vote. The populist government of Salvini’s League and Luigi Di Maio’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) […]
(AFP) Italy’s deputy prime minister has threatened to pull the country’s EU funding if the bloc does not come to the aid of 150 people stranded aboard an Italian coastguard ship. The migrants have been blocked at the Sicilian port of Catania […]
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