During a meeting on Tuesday, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said that, since the beginning of 2023, there has been a sharp increase in migration flows in the Apennines. This led to a critical situation in a number of temporary accommodation centers for migrants, especially on the island of Lampedusa.
In this situation, it was proposed to take urgent emergency measures in order to normalize the situation in this "hot spot," in which 1,800 refugees were being accommodated while the center was designed to house only some 400 people.
The council decided to declare a nationwide state of emergency at the proposal of Italian Civil Protection and Maritime Policies Minister Sebastiano Musumeci. The Italian government also decided to allocate 5 million euros ($5.46 million) from the National Emergency Fund while pending an accurate assessment of the real financial needs to solve the migration crisis, the statement said.
Earlier on Tuesday, Italian media reported that some 3,000 undocumented migrants have arrived in Italy via the Mediterranean Sea over the past three days.
The previous significant influx of migrants was registered at the end of March, when over 6,500 refugees from Asia and Africa reached the Italian coast within five days, which is equal to the number of migrants recorded in the Apennines in the first three months of 2022. Since the beginning of this year, the migration influx has quadrupled, with almost 30,000 migrants having already arrived in the country.
Italy seeks a solidarity approach from the European Union to solve the migration crisis, offering to organize a naval mission in the Mediterranean and actively contribute to the stabilization of the situation in North Africa. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in March that "Italy was left alone" to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean.