Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has said she is “in tune on many issues” with her British counterpart, Keir Starmer, especially “the fight against mass illegal immigration” and the need to explore “innovative solutions” when it comes to processing asylum claims, touting Italy’s controversial agreement with Albania.
Meloni told the weekly magazine of the Corriere della Sera newspaper that her relations with Starmer, who is from the opposite end of the political spectrum to her far-right Brothers of Italy party, were “very good”.
She added: “We are in tune on many issues. I think, for example, about the governance of migratory flows and the fight against mass illegal immigration, because it’s a problem that effects the entire European continent, even beyond EU borders.”
Meloni also spoke about her “excellent” relationship with Donald Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk, who on Thursday launched a fresh attack on Starmer’s government.
“Elon Musk is a brilliant man and it’s always interesting to debate with him,” she said, adding that it made her smile to think that those who once praised Musk as “a genius” now depicted him as a “monster” because he chose “the wrong” side of the barricade.
She said she and Starmer agreed on the need “to intensify the fight against traffickers, work towards greater cooperation between our police forces, strengthen the commitment on assisted voluntary repatriations and to not be afraid to also explore innovative solutions, such as the one that Italy initiated with the protocol with Albania to process asylum claims in a non-EU country, but under Italian and European jurisdiction”.
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However, she did not mention that the €670m (£556m) deal, which was intended to transport 3,000 people intercepted in Italian seas each month to Albania, has proved fruitless since getting under way in October because of legal problems.
The pact attracted great interest from Starmer during his meeting with Meloni in Rome in September, but to date the facilities that were supposed to accommodate the asylum seekers, including a detention camp in Gjadër, are empty
. A report by the daily newspaper Domani in late November revealed that the centre in Gjadër was instead occupied by the stray dogs adopted by prison officers deployed there.
During a speech in December at Atreju, the annual festival of her party, Meloni insisted that the deal “will work, even if I have to spend every night and day there from now until the end of the [term of the] Italian government”.
Starmer, who in September also said the UK would send Italy £4m to support Meloni’s crackdown on irregular immigration, has faced criticism over his praise of her policies from Labour backbenchers and NGOs. The Refugee Council and Amnesty International urged him in September to avoid any more “gimmicks” after the failure of the previous government to implement the Rwanda scheme.
Since her coalition government came to power in October 2022, Meloni said she had “never made a choice that I’m ashamed of”.
