Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said Tuesday that it is necessary to get a grip on the illegal influx of migrants in the wake of Monday's terrorist attack in Vienna.
"We must increase attention on illegal migrant flows, as the interior ministry is rightly doing," Di Maio said via Facebook.
"They represent a risk. Realism is needed.
"This problem must be solved.
"If a country does not have the resources to give assistance, it cannot receive (migrants), otherwise the outcome is an exacerbation of social marginalization.
"It's bad for us and it's bad for them.
"It's the duty of every State to defend its borders".
The Vienna attack comes soon after attacks in Nice and Lyon in France Brahim Aoussaoui, a 21-year-old Tunisian who killed a man and two women at a church in Nice, beheading two of his victims, landed at the Sicilian island of Lampedusa at the end of September and travelled to France at the beginning of October.
Another Tunisian, Anis Amri, arrived at Lampedusa as a minor in 2011 and went on to kill 12 people in a truck attack on a Berlin Christmas market in 2016.
"We have the obligation to guarantee the right of every citizen to feel safe in their home," Di Maio said.
"It is about taking the measures that can prevent tragedies like those of Nice and Vienna".
The minister called on the EU to pass a version of the US Patriot Act that was approved to bolster security following the September 11 attacks.
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