During his visit to Rome last month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he was “greatly interested” in Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s approach to migration management, which has included a recent agreement with Albania to house refugees while their applications for asylum are processed as well as agreements with several North African countries to bolster their efforts to counter migration to Europe. In the weeks since then, several of Meloni’s counterparts among European Union member states have echoed Starmer’s admiration for those policies, calling them a “model” for the EU.
Yet, embracing Italy’s strategy as a model to be replicated elsewhere is a mistake. Offshoring responsibility for managing refugees and asylum-seekers may achieve short-term reductions in inflows of migrants. But it will result in standardizing an approach that endangers the lives of individuals on the move, without addressing any of the structural issues that contribute to the problem.
The Italian Approach
Italy is one of the most active countries in the EU when it comes to signing agreements with third countries to curb migration flows toward its territory. Since the late 1990s, in fact, Italy has included cooperation with third countries of origin and transit in the Mediterranean region as a strategic component of its migration policy. This trend intensified in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Uprisings, when the fall of the regimes of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi led to an increase in the number of people trying to cross the Mediterranean. Throughout the mid-2010s, Italy continued to ramp up its externalization approach in an attempt to reduce the growing influx of people coming to Europe.