The disagreement between Rome and Paris is heating up.
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani on Friday mentioned there are “no excuses” for French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin’s criticism of Italy’s migration coverage on Thursday. Tajani canceled a deliberate go to to Paris over the remarks.
“This attack leaves one dumbfounded. It’s a clap of thunder in a quiet sky, an outpouring of gratuitous insults,” Tajani told Corriere della Sera in an interview.
Darmanin “offended all Italians, in addition to the government and the prime minister,” Tajani mentioned, including the feedback have been “a stab in the back from a prominent member of the French government.”
The Italian overseas minister called off a working dinner together with his French counterpart Catherine Colonna on Thursday — only a few hours earlier than their scheduled assembly in Paris.
Earlier on Thursday, Darmanin told RMC radio that the “far-right” Italian authorities led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was “incapable of resolving migration problems.”
Before Tajani canceled his journey, the French overseas ministry tried to douse the hearth by issuing an announcement stressing that Paris needs to work with Rome “in a spirit of solidarity” on managing migration flows within the Mediterranean.
But the French assertion was “not sufficient,” Tajani mentioned within the Corriere della Sera interview. “There are no excuses — even though one notes both dissatisfaction and embarrassment on the French side about what happened,” he mentioned.
“We are a great country, democratic, a founding member of the European Union with a history going back millennia,” Tajani added. “We demand respect — the same respect that we have for our allies.”
This spat is the newest between the Italian and French governments.
Last November, Paris sparked Meloni’s fury after it froze plans to absorb 3,500 refugees as a part of the EU’s migrant-relocation mechanism, and introduced border reinforcements, after Italy redirected a migrant boat to dock in Toulon.
In February, Meloni lashed out at an EU leaders summit in Brussels, blasting her French counterparts for not inviting her to a gathering with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris.
But relations appeared to enhance later that month, following Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi’s go to to Darmanin in Paris in February, as the 2 governments introduced they might perform joint missions to North African international locations.
