The Lega party’s leader Matteo Salvini (C), accompanied by party colleagues Gian Marco Centinaio (L) and Giancarlo Giorgetti (R), addresses the media after a meeting with Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinal Palace, Rome, Italy, 21 May 2018. [EPA-EFE]

All eyes are on Italy as the far-right League and rebellious Five Star Movement close in on power, ringing alarm bells in Brussels as the country inches towards becoming the first EU founding member to have a Eurosceptic government.

Italy has seen a surge of populist and anti-establishment sentiment as the country struggles to emerge from a decade-long economic crisis amid sky-high youth unemployment and hundreds of thousands of migrants arriving on its shores.

Many Italians feel their country has been abandoned to deal with the migrants and have become disenchanted by the European Union as it is today.

At Trieste trilateral, Italy laments migrant burden

In the margins of the Western Balkans summit in Trieste, Italy’s Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni criticised fellow EU member states on Wednesday (12 July) for leaving his country to grapple with the migrant crisis, despite pledges made by France and Germany.

League senator and economist Alberto Bagnai, the inspiration behind leader Matteo Salvini’s euroscepticism, summed up the disillusionment with Europe by telling foreign reporters of the first thing he did after being elected to the Senate in March.

“I immediately went to thank (former prime minister) Mario Monti, without whom I would probably never have been elected,” he said.

Former European Commissioner Monti was named prime minister after Silvio Berlusconi’s government fell in 2011 at the height of the economic crisis and he imposed stinging austerity measures to restore market confidence, including a pension reform that both the League and Five Star want to abolish.

Lorenzo De Sio, Professor of Political Science at Luiss University in Rome, told AFP their research showed that “70% of M5S voters want to stay in the euro and in the EU – but not as it is now” and that “there has been excessive use of the populist label”.

“In recent times …. anyone who criticises the European project is labelled a populist and anti-European,” De Sio says.

“Even pro-European parties like the (centre-left) Democratic Party or (Berlusconi’s) Forza Italia announced their willingness to change the EU’s current austerity policy during the election campaign.”

Tajani warns compatriots against exiting the euro

This year’s “State of the Union” conference opened in Florence on Friday  (11 May), coinciding with the news that Italy is likely to get a coalition government of two Eurosceptic forces, both keen on leaving the eurozone. Speaking at the event, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani strongly warned Italy against exiting the euro.

This disillusionment was captured by Italian president Sergio Mattarella, who in his speech on the State of the Union conference in Florence 10 days ago outlined “the diffuse belief among European citizens that the common project has lost its ability to truly meet the growing hopes of large sections of the population.”

However Gianfranco Pasquino, professor of political science at the Johns Hopkins School in Bologna, lays the blame for Italy’s shift on the establishment parties Mattarella has served ever since entering national politics in the early 1980s.

“If we have come to this point it is because the pro-European parties, starting with the Democratic Party … have not waged a real political and cultural battle for Europe,” he says.

“They have had an ambivalent attitude in many ways.”

5-Star, League want ECB to forgive €250 billion of Italy debt

The anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and far-right Northern League plan to ask the European Central Bank to forgive €250 billion of Italian debt, according to a draft of a coalition programme the parties are working on.

Rejection

Across the continent disenchantment with the EU also reflects the rejection of the established political class considered the architects of the current crisis.

This feeling is especially strong in Italy, where a so-called political “caste” has for decades been seen as being particularly corrupt and out of touch.

“There has been a rejection of the old political class due to its poor results, and the unpopular measures taken by the previous governments have not led to the hoped-for recovery. The vote also shows the desire to change an ineffective political class,” says De Sio.

“The M5S and the League have certainly made exaggerated promises but at least they gave the impression of a certain autonomy regarding Brussels, a kind of return to sovereignty.”

For Giorgio De Rita, general manager of socio-economic research centre Censis, the League and Five Star have been able to “ride a wave of discontent from people who could find no other form of representation.”

“The vote was one of anger, for some fear, for others hope, but above all, it showed that these feelings were no longer contained by traditional politics,” says Marco Damiliano, director of the weekly L’Espresso.

Italy: From pro-European to Euroscepticism

The strong performance of Eurosceptic parties in Italy’s 4 March election stands out in a country that was generally pro-European in years past. EURACTIV.fr reports.

Source: https://www.euractiv.com/section/elections/news/how-did-eu-founding-member-italy-go-euro-sceptic/

The post How did EU-founding member Italy go Eurosceptic? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

In August 2008, Gaddafi signed a “friendship” agreement with then Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in which he agreed to toughen security measures, including joint maritime patrols, to stem the flow of “illegal migrants” to Europe. In return, Italy pledged to pay $5bn to the Gaddafi regime in compensation for the colonial crimes Italy committed during its decades-long rule of Libya. Gaddafi held up his part of the deal. According to UNHCR figures, the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean into Europe from Libya dropped from almost 40,000 in 2008 to about 5,000 in 2010.

But with the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, the migration route was reactivated, and in 2016 the number of migrants crossing from Libya to Italy grew to 170,000. At the same time, various extremist groups took advantage of the situation and set up camp in Libya, which the European Union, and especially France (which suffered a number of terrorist attacks in recent years), has perceived as a growing terror threat. In response, Europe is resorting to its old ways in resolving its issues with Libya – striking a deal with Libyan leadership.

European tug-of-war in Libya: In an attempt to conclude another migration deal with Libya, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni invited the leader of the UN-backed National Accord government, Fayez al-Sarraj, to Rome last month. He managed to convince Sarraj to allow the Italian navy to operate inside Libya’s territorial waters in order to stem the flow of migrants. Italy’s parliament voted on the move, but Sarraj did not consult others in Libya before accepting Italy’s offer, and as a result, he faced widespread criticism back home for allowing what critics deemed “a violation of Libyan sovereignty”. Sarraj defended himself by explaining that he did not sign a new deal with Italy and all he agreed was to re-activate parts of the 2008 “friendship” agreement between Gaddafi and Berlusconi, which included joint naval patrols inside Libyan waters.

Joining the wave of criticism was military leader Khalifa Haftar of the self-proclaimed Libyan National Army. After the announcement in Rome, he threatened to bomb Italian ships if they entered Libyan waters. But just a day before Sarraj’s trip to Rome, the two Libyan men met in Paris under the auspices of French President Emmanuel Macron. The reconciliation talks between Sarraj and Haftar – brokered by Macron – resulted in a 10-point statement that expressed commitment on both sides to a ceasefire and the holding of national elections, which angered Italy.

While France and Italy led in unison the 2011 military campaign against Gaddafi, today the two countries are playing a tug-of-war in Libya, which is further destabilising the country. Rome is standing firmly behind Sarraj, hoping he could help with a solution to the migration issue and Paris is backing Haftar, seeing his army as an effective counterterrorism measure. But as the two EU countries are pulling in opposite directions in Libya, reconciliation and a final solution to the current crises will become that much more difficult to achieve.

‘Dumping’ refugees: Back in 2009, when Gaddafi visited Rome to celebrate the ratification of this “friendship” agreement, the refugee policy director at Human Rights Watch, Bill Frelick, said that the agreement looked “less like friendship and more like a dirty deal to enable Italy to dump migrants and asylum seekers on Libya and evade its obligations”. Unfortunately, eight years on, Italy and the rest of the EU intend to dump again an international problem on Libya.

The EU wants to temporarily return migrants to centres and camps in Libya, from where their asylum claims to Europe can be processed. It is no secret that the overwhelming majority of the migrants will not be granted asylum in Europe and hence their temporary housing in Libya will become permanent. Due to the ongoing violent conflict, Libya is a divided, unstable country with no strong central political authority in place. Some western countries perceive and present the migration crisis as part of this internal conflict and want Libya to take responsibility for thousands of migrants who, after embarking on the dangerous sea crossing, fail to reach or obtain permanent settlement in Europe.

Some have even gone as far as suggesting that Libya – being Africa’s third largest country with the highest reserves of natural resources coupled with a very small population (six million) – can permanently accommodate millions of poverty stricken sub-Saharan Africans who want to leave their countries of origin. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said last year that a “giant refugee city” should be built in Libya. This strategy would practically transform Libya into a buffer zone “protecting” Europe from sub-Saharan migrants. Any such policy, if realised, would jeopardise the future of Libya and would definitely not provide safe and acceptable living conditions to millions of migrants.

The permanent resettlement of millions of sub-Saharan migrants in Libya would cause dramatic demographic changes in the country and eventually lead to major social and economic upheaval. The consequent instability, poverty and violence in Libya would, of course, push desperate people across the Mediterranean again. So the “solution” to the migration problem that the EU is envisioning is not a solution at all. If it continues to push for it and to have a destabilising effect on Libyan politics, the end result will be much worse than the current situation.

Published in Daily Times, August 22nd 2017.

Source: http://dailytimes.com.pk/world/22-Aug-17/italy-and-france-are-playing-a-dangerous-game-in-libya

The post Italy and France are playing a dangerous game in Libya first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.