Category Archives: Italy

European Union, France, Germany, Government, Immigration, Italy, Politics

The desperate migrants’ route across Europe

EU IMMIGRATION

IN the freezing passes of the Italian Alps, migrants march slowly up an icy incline as they head for France.

The mountains have become an unlikely route for Africans looking for a new life across the border.

Thousands are thought to have tried to traverse the range over the last few months alone, wearing clothing that is unlikely to protect them from the extreme conditions.

Faced with the policies of Italy’s Right-wing government, asylum seekers who arrive by boat on the country’s Mediterranean shores have headed north instead to reach France.

From there they can move on to Germany, Spain, Belgium, Holland and – ultimately, for many – Britain.

The latest route used by desperate migrants is increasingly coming to the attention of populist Right-wing political groups that have risen to prominence on the back of Europe’s migrant crisis.

Already, Italy has swung heavily to the right, with interior minister Matteo Salvini turning migrant boats away from harbours. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban has made stopping immigration a cornerstone of his philosophy, and young conservative Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz has called for an “axis of the willing” to strengthen borders. Anti-immigrant MEP Christelle Lechevalier – of the renamed French right-wing National Front, now National Rally – last week tried to make political capital out of African migrants crossing from Italy into France at the ski resort of Montgenevre.

Some 26 European nations are in the supposedly border-free Schengen zone, which makes it possible to cross between member states without border controls. But faced with the prospect of mass immigration, police at several border posts are increasingly turning away new arrivals and sending them back to Italy.

As a result, migrants are turning to mountain passes, ski resorts and hiking trails to avoid official checks.

Snow-free in the summer, the Alps are a far less dangerous hike. And even if migrants are caught and sent back to Italy, they can always try again.

Earlier this year there were reports of migrants using the Col de l’Echelle mountain pass into France through thick snowdrifts. At the end of their eight-mile journey, African migrants would simply knock on the first door they saw.

Up to half a million migrants are thought to be in Italy, despite the fall in the number arriving – usually from lawless Libya – in boats across the Mediterranean.

Widespread public reaction to Europe’s migrant crisis has prompted EU nations to belatedly close off entry points and movement routes (as well as proposed detention centres in the Med to process asylum applications). German chancellor Angela Merkel hailed the migrant summit agreement as a success, with its vague talk of promises of cash for Third World countries to help them control population flows and loosen proposals to tighten border controls within the EU.

But no European country, let alone any African one, has yet agreed to host a migration centre. Mrs Merkel’s firm grip on Germany, which she has led since 2005, has weakened in recent months. Interior minister Horst Seehofer, leader of the Bavarian CSU party, was so incensed with last week’s deal that Mrs Merkel’s governing alliance was in serious jeopardy of collapsing. There were fears he was on the verge of ordering German police to start turning new arrivals away (in direct defiance of Mrs Merkel’s wishes).

Last Friday’s summit agreement failed to nail down any firm agreements on exactly how migrants arriving in EU countries on the Mediterranean coast could be dispersed elsewhere.

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Economic, European Union, Government, Italy, Politics, Society

A provocation and insult to democracy

ITALY

ITALY has had no fewer than 65 governments since the War – with an average survival rate of just over a year. The country is hardly renowned as a beacon of democratic stability.

Even by the standards of this volatile nation, however, the current political crisis is becoming more troubling and bizarre by the day. It proves yet again the disastrous folly of imposing the one-size-fits-all euro on countries for which it is so obviously unsuitable. Pertinently, it demonstrates that Brussels has no qualms about trampling on democracy to keep the dream of a European superstate alive.

Italy’s national finances are in a dire state. Marooned in a sea of debt, with a stagnant economy and crippling unemployment rate, citizens of that beleaguered land renounced their mainstream Europhile parties in a general election just three months ago. They rightly blamed membership of the single currency for their misery and elected a coalition of unashamedly populist, Eurosceptic parties – led by the maverick Five Star movement and Right-wing Northern League.

Yet, when radical economist Paolo Savona – a passionate opponent of the euro – was named finance minister he was vetoed by Italy’s slavishly pro-Brussels president Sergio Matarella, who then nominated his own man as prime minister and invited him to form a totally unelected government. It has no mandate of course and will soon fall. Mr Matarella could possibly be impeached for overreaching his powers. But what an affront to democracy.

Had this happened in some Third World state, it would have quickly been denounced as tyrannical and corrupt. Not in Europe. In both Paris and Berlin, Mr Matarella is being praised for his courage. There is no better example or illustration of how people across the European continent are being disenfranchised – and just why they are crying out for change.

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Britain, Economic, Europe, European Union, Financial Markets, Government, Italy, Politics

Italy’s populist vote and the uncertainty of the euro

EUROZONE CRISIS

IN a continuation of a wave of populist voting following Brexit and the election of Donald Trump, Italy has now followed suit. The ousting and forced resignation of Matteo Renzi, a very successful prime minister in Italy, adds yet more resonance to an EU that is breaking at the seams.

Despite what Marine le Pen, the far-right leader of France’s National Front, would like to portray, Italy’s revolt was not particularly based on an anti-EU stance. The top populist parties in Italy, Five Star and the Northern League, are not opposed to membership of the EU itself but they are averse to the Eurozone.

Nevertheless, it will hardly be seen as a ringing endorsement of the actions of the EU. The issues that have driven this latest referendum result – fears over the waves of refugees from Africa, a desire to rise up against the establishment, and unhappiness over the way the economy has been managed – are the same dissenting signals that we have seen elsewhere.

It is the economic impact that we have most to fear from the Italian result. There is also the issue of what that might mean for the negotiations over Britain’s exit from the EU. The Italian economy is far from healthy, despite marginal improvements in unemployment rates, and the banks remain weak. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio, at a staggering 133 per cent, is second only to Greece’s in the Eurozone. Despite Italy being the Eurozone’s third largest economy, the country has contracted by around 12 per cent since the financial crisis of 2008.

President Sergio Mattarella will be anxious now to ease fears of instability. But regardless of what action he takes there will be a delay as the markets adjust. In reality, he remains helpless as to what he can do to ease those fears. How long that period of instability lasts is the biggest uncertain factor the markets face. Financial markets do not like uncertainty or instability.

There is a risk that the failure of a major Italian bank, such as the troubled Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, could set off a wider crisis. Making the banks strong enough becomes more difficult amid political ambivalence.

That could well provoke another crisis in the euro, at a time when Britain will be in negotiations about its withdrawal from the EU. The fusion of these events is not going to help any new euro crisis or aid Theresa May and her government getting a favourable Brexit deal.

The most telling comment yet has come from the German finance minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, who has said there was no reason for a euro crisis but that Italy urgently needs a functioning government. Startling. Mr Schaeuble infers that a currency crisis was not inevitable. Unfortunately, ending the uncertainty is more than just an Italian problem.

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