Quote:
|
Italy threatened by national crisis
|
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36080216
Quote:
Italians feel under siege. There is talk here of a looming national crisis.
"Of course we are worried," says Italy's Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan.
"We are worried first of all from a humanitarian point of view, from a security point of view, and then of course from a financial point of view. The cost of migration has been substantial."
Mr Padoan complains that the EU left Italy alone with its migration crisis for too long.
He points out that Italy was faced with mass arrivals long before Greece and that the EU refused to acknowledge until recently that Italy's coastal borders were in fact Europe's common southern flank.
Now he is calling for a common EU migration strategy and a common EU migration fund to help front-line countries like Italy.
In the meantime he wants more flexibility in eurozone financial rules, to compensate for the losses Italy has suffered due to mass migration.
|
I thought mass uncontrolled migration could only be a good thing, a net benefit, something to be embraced, something to be proud of.
So with another 300,000 heading their way, Italy's existing poor/unemployed will have to compete with yet more of the world's needy whilst the Eurocrats carry on deluding themselves that they have a plan for dealing with this growing nightmare.
Quote:
The eurozone's third-largest economy is in the doldrums, in its third year of recession. Italy's public debt measured against GDP is the biggest in the eurozone after Greece.
Italians feel that the EU owes them...
...Italy has no more money, no more space, no more facilities to help these people, he insists.
Like Greece, Italy is a gatekeeper to Europe along its southern shoreline.
Like Greece, Italy in the past waved migrants onwards and northwards towards richer neighbours.
But with northern borders now firmly shut, migrants still streaming in and difficulties deporting even failed asylum seekers back home, Italy says it is not waving, but drowning.
|
Would this migrant crisis be happening on this scale were it not for the EU?