“Good sense is needed. The landings and the reception of hundreds of thousands of ‘non-refugees’ cannot continue to be an Italian-only problem,” League leader Salvini said on Twitter.
“Either Europe gives us a hand to put our country into security or we will have to choose other paths”.
On Sunday Salvini said that “Italy cannot be transformed into a refugee camp” during a visit to Sicily ahead of local elections there. He added that “Tunisia is a free and democratic country that is not exporting gentlemen, but often exports convicts… I’ll speak to my Tunisian counterpart (about this)”.
The Telegraph reported that Italy’s parties were finally given the green light to form a coalition government on Thursday evening, after President Sergio Mattarella, torpedoed the choice of Paolo Savona as economy minister. Savona, 81, had described Italy’s adoption of the euro a “historic error”, describing the single currency as “a German cage”.
Alessandra Bocchi, a Tunis-based journalist covering Libya and Tunisia, tweeted in the wake of the new crisis: “Imagine if, after the American election, the electoral collage decided to make Hillary president instead of Trump, despite Trump winning. Imagine further if it cited ‘protecting foreign investors’ and ‘democracy’ as reasons for doing so. This is happening in Italy right now.”
The parties however reached an accord on Thursday night, after dropping their insistence on Savona’s position. “Maybe finally we have made it, after so many obstacles, attacks, threats and lies,” Salvini noted on Facebook shortly after the deal was announced.
The new Prime Minister Conte was summoned to the presidential palace in Rome on Thursday night for the second time, and given a mandate to form a government.
Two polls released on Wednesday showed the vast majority of Italians did not want to drop the Euro. One was done by IstitutoPiepoli and the other by Euromedia.
Salvini has called for repatriations to be dramatically stepped up: “It’s now necessary to cut 5 billions in funds directed towards welcoming illegal immigrants.” According to the Five Star-Lega programme, they will be directed towards repatriations instead.
Salvini also said he would find “convergence” with the Catholic Church on his planned crackdown on undocumented migrants. “I have started to cultivate useful and numerous relations with various exponents of the Catholic world,” he promised. “We’ll work together, we’ll amaze you, we will decidedly find convergences”. He said “there is much more closeness than distance with them because (migrant) reception, within the limits and rules and possibilities, is an interest of all I think”.