>>>ANSA/Meloni says Italy anything but isolated on migration

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 5 - Italy is anything but isolated within the European Union when it comes to tackling irregular migration, Premier Giorgia Meloni said on Thursday.
    "I am satisfied, we are far from being isolated," she told reporters on arriving for the third meeting of the 47 ,members of the European Political Community (EPC) in Granada, Spain.
    "The perception is evolving towards the protection of legal migration flows," she added after the 27 EU members states on Wednesday reached agreement on the key text on crisis regulation in the Union's new pact on migration and asylum, in what Deputy premier and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani later described as a "success for Italy".
    Meloni also said Italy "wants there to be a non-paternalistic approach" to Africa, calling for "a Europe that believes in it as a whole".
    The premier reiterated that she "understood" Tunisian President Kais Saied after he rejected a 127 million euro aid package from the EU on grounds Tunisia "does not accept anything resembling charity or favour, because our country and our people do not want sympathy and do not accept it when it is without respect", according to a press release.
    "I believe that Saied, with whom I have a good relationship, spoke first of all to his public opinion, I understand what he said," said Meloni.
    "Tunisia has a problem that is no different from ours, there is illegal immigration there too," she continued.
    On the government's Mattei Plan to boost energy partnerships with African countries and cooperation on halting migrant flows, Meloni said it had "reached a point of arrival with a regulation on governance", adding that she would present the plan to parliament in November.
    Meloni also said she was due to have a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday.
    "It will be an opportunity to discuss how to make progress particularly on the external dimension" of migration management through the strengthening of cooperation with countries of origin and transit.
    On Monday sources said contacts were underway between Berlin and Rome at a technical level to try to resolve a row over German funding of NGOs carrying out search and rescue in the central Mediterranean and disembarking rescued migrants and refugees in Italy.
    A bilateral between Meloni and Scholz at the EPC meeting in Spain later in the week would depend on the progress of the technical contacts underway, the sources added.
    Meanwhile on Thursday Meloni and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak co-hosted an initially restricted meeting with their counterparts from the Netherlands (Mark Rutte) and Albania (Edi Rama) to discuss possible operational initiatives, both bilaterally and multilaterally, to combat human trafficking.
    The format - which remained open to other leaders - was thus defined to have two EU and two non-EU countries represented, two from Northern Europe subject to secondary movements, and two from Southern Europe mainly subject to primary movements.
    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron later joined the meeting taking place on the sidelines of the EPC summit.
    They reportedly discussed how to strengthen operational cooperation in order to raise the level of the fight against international criminal organisations that traffic in human beings.
    Europe has had enough diagnosis of the migrant issue and now concrete action is needed to stem migrant flows and beat the traffickers, they agreed.
    Everyone has the same problem with traffickers, both the countries of arrival and those involved in secondary movements, the summit agreed.
    Now what is needed is concrete action, moving from the diagnosis to the cure, the six said in voicing a common awareness.
    The six leaders went on to approve eight action points.
    From 'robust' action against traffickers to greater support for partner countries, the IOM and the UNHCR in assisting migrants in repatriations and support for North African countries in protecting borders and against entry: these were some of the eight points agreed in a written document.
    Macron tolf press conference after the summit that France had made binding commitments against traffickers with Rome.
    "We want to develop at the level of the European Political Community a fight against illegal immigration' and in the new 6-way format on migration - with France, Italy, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Albania and the EU Commission - more binding commitments will be elaborated which will be discussed at the next summit organised by the United Kingdom," Macron said.
    The six partners aim to implement "joint actions", Macron stressed, explaining that it is not only a matter of "preventing illegal trafficking but also working with third countries of origin and transit".
    Italy is bearing the brunt of rising migrant flows across the central Mediterranean while Albania is a major country of transit for migrants along the so-called Balkan route.
    Both Meloni and Sunak have declared war on the criminal gangs that traffic migrants, in Italy's case in small boats from north Africa and in Britain's case in small boats across the English Channel from France.
    Rutte was present in Tunis when Meloni signed a Memorandum of Understanding on migration this summer.
    Also present was von der Leyen, who has repeatedly said the EU stands with Rome on migration.
    Tunisia "formally asked" the European Union for 60 million euros in aid and is free to return it if chooses, said European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi on X.
    The commissioner added that the disbursement is not linked to the EU-Tunisia memorandum of understanding signed in July but concerns budget support measures taken since 2021.
    On Monday Saied said the country would not accept "charity" funds on grounds they "contradict the memorandum of understanding signed in Tunis in the spirit that prevailed at the Rome conference last July".
    A further 67 million euros of aid under the MOU was also rejected as "alms". (ANSA).