Will New Italian Government Succeed in Solving 'Migrant Problem'?

The newly sworn-in Italian government has set its eyes on solving the migrant problem, promising to send all illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin. Laura Tecce, an Italian political television commentator and a journalist for Italian outlet il Giornale believes this will be one of its priorities along with "recovery of national sovereignty," defense of Italian production on the markets and fight with "unfairly imposed taxes."

She slammed the label "populist" often attributed to the new government by Italian media, claiming that there is no place for such a negative term with new government's promises. According to her it will simply reestablish "a social equity" after years in which Italian governments were dominated by "the interests of the globalist elites, banks and lobbies."

Commenting on the government's focus on migrants, Tecce noted that spending €5 billion a year is "too much." She also criticized the fact that national public funds often managed with little transparency.

"We must overcome the current system of assigning centers to private individuals and red cooperatives [social-communist movements] and aim for greater involvement of public institutions, starting with the territorial ones," she said.

Paolo Salom, a political observer with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, is more pessimistic about Giuseppe Conte's government's plans to solve the "migrant problem" in Italy. According to him, it will have a hard time sending migrants in Italy back to the countries of their origin without agreements with the respective governments, which the Italian government is unlikely to strike in the near future. At the same time he notes that in the mid-term such agreements could be achieved.

Salom noted that such agreements are likely to be costly and thus increasing the bill for dealing with the "migrant problem." On the other hand, Matteo Salvini, Italy's new interior minister, promised to reduce that bill, the political observer added, noting that it was unclear how he is going to resolve the vicious circle.

"Mr. Salvini has chosen a really difficult path, but it's true that we have to deal with this problem and try to solve it. Because you cannot just allow anyone in the world to get to Italy and Europe because you don't have room for everybody," Paolo Salom said.

Responding to the European Commission president's words on what Italians should do to resolve their economic problems, Laura Tecce noted that the EU doesn't care about its citizens.

"It [the EU] is not the Europe of the people utopistically imagined but it is only a jumble of interests linked to the great speculative finance, globalist lobbies and strong powers. It is the Europe of the Troika, of the will of German hegemony and of the primacy of the markets on politics," the political commentator said.

She expressed her opinion that the relations between Rome and Brussels will be set by understanding that Italy will not "bend" either to "the excessive power of the German-Franco axis," or to rhetorical tools such as "spirit of solidarity" towards "the poor refugees fleeing the war."

Tecce believes that the new Italian government will also stand for the strengthening of the European Parliament's positions in the EU as "the only European institution to have direct democratic legitimacy."

The views and opinions expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.