Why Italy Dares to Turn Away Refugees Rome is reacting to a rising problem, but to EU elites such ideas remain unthinkable.By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on June 19th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-italy-dares-to-turn-away-refugees-1529363157

Italy’s new populist government signals a major challenge to the European status quo, but not in the way most observers initially expected. The governing coalition has put its challenge to euro policy on hold. Instead it is turning to a subject on which the European establishment is more vulnerable: migration. The force behind the shift is Matteo Salvini, Italy’s new minister of the interior. He is also the leader of the League, the smaller and more right-wing of Italy’s two ruling parties.

Mr. Salvini shocked Brussels last week by denying Italian entry to the MS Aquarius, a rescue ship that had plucked 629 drowning would-be migrants from the seas off Libya. As human-rights activists reacted with anger, Mr. Salvini doubled down, banning all migrant rescue ships from all Italian ports.

French President Emmanuel Macron denounced Mr. Salvini for abandoning refugees; Mr. Salvini torched the French for hypocritically leaving Italy alone to bear the burden of helping them. Roiling matters further, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, the head of Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union and an essential partner in Angela Merkel’s national coalition, gave Mr. Salvini a congratulatory phone call and asked to meet with him.

For many Italians, starved for a national show of strength after years of marginalization, the standoff was almost as gratifying as a World Cup victory. As interior minister of a weak debtor nation, Mr. Salvini had done what Britain’s euroskeptics can only dream of: smack down France and split the German establishment against itself. According to the polling firm Ipsos, about 60% of Italians backed Mr. Salvini’s stance. Those who dissented, perhaps following Pope Francis, were swept aside in a surge of patriotic and anti-immigrant sentiment. CONTINUE AT SITE

 

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