Under Italy's conservative Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, levels of illegal immigration in the country have risen Plummeted 64% Italy's foreign minister boasted that he had cracked down on smugglers and worked with neighboring countries to stop the influx of contraband.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Sunday that her success showed that enforcing strict border policies is possible, but it requires hard work.
“It's not easy. We've worked really hard to achieve this goal,” Tajani told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News' “Sunday Morning Futures.” “We're very happy about it. We're not against legal immigration, we're against illegal immigration.”
“We have agreements with Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. We are working with North African countries to reduce the number of ships coming into their ports…[and] Fight crime.”
Meloni's policies have provoked mixed reactions across Europe, but the new Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, from the left-wing Labour Party, said: He praised Italy's policy in that regard..
Tajani stressed that Italy was actively fighting human trafficking, as traffickers were paid to transport distressed migrants across borders.
“The traffickers are the most important part of crime. They are human traffickers, they are arms traffickers, they are drug traffickers. They [belong to] “They are the same organisations but we need to become very strong and take on these organisations and that is what we are doing,” Takani said.
Meloni reflected on the human trafficking crisis in an interview with Bartiromo last year.
“We have to fight against human traffickers,” Meloni stressed in an interview. “It's unbelievable what they're doing. These organizations are getting stronger all the time, and they're using their power and their money to [have] Against the nation.”
“We cannot allow the mafia to decide who enters our country.”
Tajani, who is in the United States ahead of the United Nations General Assembly meeting in Manhattan this week, said conservatives were on the rise in Europe.
“There is a centre-right majority in Europe, including in the new European Commission,” he said, referring to recent elections. “We are working hard for growth.”
Meloni is generally Most Popular Polls show she is the most popular among European leaders, even as she sometimes clashes with more liberal ones.
Tajani argued that the current government has made some progress in Italy's economy, which has been largely stagnant over the past two decades.
“We are happy [there is] “Unemployment is going down. Stocks are going up,” he said, adding, “More needs to be done.”
Europe is suffering from a general slowdown in growth. Earlier this month, Mario Draghi, former president of the European Central Bank and prime minister of Italy, said: The long-awaited 400 pages A report on how the 27-nation European Union can jump-start its economy.
Draghi used the report to explore why Europe has grown more slowly than the United States in recent years and appears to be lagging behind in key industries such as technology.
He called for regulatory reform, streamlining the bureaucracy, and more.
