Pragmatic Post-Fascism

For Giorgia Meloni, the crisis in Ceuta is not really a problem. It is a serious problem for Pedro Sánchez, but not for Italy’s prime minister, who has clearly exaggerated the risk that some of the 8,000 migrants still gathered in the Spanish enclave could eventually reach Italy. Most of the more than 70,000 people who crossed the Spanish border on July 30 and 31 quickly turned back.

Meloni faces a more immediate concern in the steady arrival of irregular migrants through southern Italy, along the central Mediterranean route. Between January and July, 16,454 people reached Europe through that route, according to the latest Frontex data. That exceeded the total entering through Spain’s routes, including 11,537 through the Mediterranean and 2,856 through the Canary Islands.

Yet no European country other than Spain, acting in retaliation, has suspended the Schengen free-movement treaty with Italy. Nor has there been a comparable call to restore border controls with Italy after Germany identified a Russian agent suspected of involvement in a thwarted attack at Leipzig airport who held an Italian visa. Italy, however, has taken that step against Spain.

Italy therefore has limited grounds for lecturing Europe on immigration management. The central Mediterranean remains the European Union’s main route for irregular migration, while the “innovative” solution of establishing deportation centers in third countries has proved a fiasco in Albania. Italian courts have questioned the centers, which have remained practically empty for two years.

The article sees a paradox in the European Commission and most EU governments embracing the Italian model as if it were a cure-all. It describes Meloni, whom The New York Times has called a pragmatic post-fascist, as the political voice currently setting the tone across Europe. Twenty-two countries followed her initiative, alongside Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, by blaming Spain for the Ceuta crisis and linking it to the extraordinary regularization of hundreds of thousands of migrants living there. Italy signed the confrontational letter demanding renewed border controls, and Spain responded in kind. Both governments extended the measures again this week.