Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, scrapped a trip to Paris on Thursday in reaction to “insulting” comments by the French interior minister against the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
In an interview with RMC radio, Gérald Darmanin said Meloni was “unable to solve the migration problems on which she was elected” and accused her of “lying” to voters that she would end the influx of people crossing the Mediterranean in search of refuge in Europe.
Tajani had been preparing to fly to Paris for a meeting with his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, that was partly aimed at restoring good relations between the two countries when news of Darmanin’s comments reached him.
“I will not go to Paris for the expected meeting with Colonna,” he wrote on Twitter. “The insults towards the government and Italy uttered by minister Darmanin are unacceptable. This is not the spirit in which common European challenges should be addressed.”
Paris swiftly sought to reassure Tajani of its willingness to work with Rome “to face the common challenge represented by the rapid growth in migration flows”, but it was not enough to change his mind.
Colonna said she had spoken to Tajani by phone. “I told him that relations between Italy and France are based on reciprocal respect, between our two countries and their leaders,” she tweeted. “I hope to be able to welcome him in Paris soon.”
Italy and France have frequently been at loggerheads over immigration but relations took a turn for the worse after Meloni’s rightwing government came to power in October. In November, Darmanin accused the Italian government of being “selfish” after it refused to allow a rescue ship carrying 230 people to dock in Italy, forcing it to travel to France. Meloni responded by saying France’s reaction had been “aggressive”.
Emmanuel Macron and the French government still recall the damaging spat with Italy four years ago when Paris took the extraordinary step of recalling its ambassador from Rome, in the worst crisis between the two neighbouring countries since the second world war.
At the time France blamed what it called baseless verbal attacks from Italy’s then political leaders, the far-right Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which it said were “without precedent since world war two”. Immigration at the French-Italian border was also part of the reason for that spat.
The French government is under pressure over immigration after it pushed back an immigration bill to the autumn because Macron’s centrist grouping, which has lost its absolute majority in parliament, could not gather the required parliamentary support for the bill in the wake of the crisis over a law raising the pension age to 64.
