Italy Declares 6-month State of Emergency Amid Migrant Numbers Surge

VIVA – Italy's right-wing government on Tuesday declared a six-month national state of emergency to help it cope with a surge in migrants arriving on the country's southern shores. 

State TV said a special commissioner was expected to be named. Initial funding of 5 million euros (nearly $5.5 million) was also approved as part of the measure approved by Premier Giorgia Meloni and her Cabinet, as reported from the apnews site. 

In a statement after the Cabinet meeting, the government said the state of emergency was deemed necessary “to carry out with urgency extraordinary measures to reduce congestion” at an overwhelmed migrant shelter on a tiny Italian island in the Mediterranean.

Also needed are “new structures, suitable both for sheltering as well as the processing and repatriation of migrants who don’t have the requisites to stay” in Italy, the government statement informed. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Italy’s governing coalitions also imposed a state of emergency, enabling the Cabinet to mandate many coping measures by decree, temporarily bypassing the usually long parliamentary process for funding and regulations.

“Let’s be clear, this doesn’t resolve the problem, whose solution is tied to a mindful and responsible intervention of the European Union,” Civil Protection and Sea Policies Minister Nello Musumeci was quoted as saying by the Italian news agency ANSA.

Since the beginning of 2023, around 31,000 migrants, either rescued by Italian military vessels or charity boats or reaching Italy unaided, have entered Italy, according to Interior Ministry data. 

That's almost four times as many, from about 8,000, for the same period two years earlier.

The arrivals of migrants, who set out in unseaworthy vessels launched by smugglers from northern African shores, seem destined to swell. Early on Wednesday, a smugglers’ boat, crowded with some 700 passengers, was expected to pull into the port of Catania, a major city in eastern Sicily.

Recently, 26 migrant boats, many of which did not actually need rescuing, reached Lampedusa, a small Italian island south of Sicily. 

The facility on Lampedusa which houses migrants so they can be temporarily identified as a first step towards applying for asylum is reeling under the relentless stream of arrivals.

The shelter is meant to hold about 350-400 people, but in recent days, 3,000 new people have arrived. Italy hired empty commercial ferries to transfer hundreds of them to Sicily or the mainland.

On Tuesday, about 1,600 migrants stayed on the Lampedusa structure, and authorities hope the weather improves so that by evening about 400 people can be transported off the island.

"There are many women with small children, plus there are unaccompanied minors," the director of the migrant center, Lorena Tortorici, told. 

"We are in an emergency situation. The staff is trying to do what they can." Tortorici added. 

The largest number of migrants arriving so far this year have come from Ivory Coast, followed by people from Guinea, Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia, and Bangladesh, according to an Interior Ministry tally.

For years, most of the smuggling boats sailing the dangerous central Mediterranean route sailed from western Libya. 

But in the last few months, many voyages started from eastern Libya or Tunisia. Other routes start from Turkey, aiming to reach Calabria or Puglia at the southern tip of mainland Italy.