Keir Starmer's meeting with the far-right prime minister in Rome has been described as “disturbing”.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has met his Italian counterpart Giorgia Meloni in Rome to discuss ways to tackle irregular immigration.
Ahead of Monday's meeting, the UK prime minister said he wanted to “understand” the “dramatic reduction” in the number of migrant arrivals in Italy. The visit with the far-right Italian leader has drawn criticism from members of Starmer's left-leaning Labour Party.
Starmer also visited a national immigration coordination centre with Italy's Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi.
Since Labour won the election in July, Starmer has vowed to crack down on illegal immigration despite rejecting the previous Conservative government's plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda.
His meeting with Meloni, who heads the far-right anti-immigration Brothers of Italy party, has drawn criticism.
Labour MP Kim Johnson told The Guardian newspaper it was “disturbing” to see Starmer “trying to learn lessons from a neo-fascist government”.
Dangerous
Johnson said the visit came shortly after the UK was rocked by far-right riots during which mosques and migrant accommodation centres were attacked.
The arrival of undocumented migrants and asylum seekers in small boats from France remains a dangerous issue for British political parties.
More than 22,000 people have made the perilous crossing of the English Channel so far this year, a slight increase compared to the same period in 2023.
Several dozen people have died, including eight people who died when a boat carrying around 60 people ran aground on rocks on Saturday night. On the same day, 14 boats with 801 people on board reached Britain.
British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper defended the government's decision to seek advice from Italy's right-wing administration, telling the BBC that the government had “a moral imperative to make sure that we are pursuing criminal gangs who are putting lives at risk.”
Offshore centers
Despite rejecting the Rwanda plan, Starmer has not ruled out arrangements that would allow asylum claims to be processed abroad.
Italy reached an agreement with Albania in November to host two centres where people would be housed while their asylum applications are processed.
People whose asylum applications are rejected will be sent back to their countries of origin, while those whose applications are accepted will be allowed to enter Italy.
Meloni's government has also signed a deal with Tunisia, granting it aid in exchange for greater efforts to stop refugees heading to Italy and leaving the North African country to cross the Mediterranean.
Rome has also renewed a deal with the internationally recognised Libyan government in Tripoli dating back to 2017, under which it provides training and funding to the coast guard to stem refugee outflows and return to Libya those already at sea.
Rights groups said the policy is pushing thousands of refugees back to Libya, where they face torture and abuse under arbitrary detention.
Visiting the migrant coordination centre, Starmer said it appeared the lower number of arrivals in Italy was due to “work that has been done in some of the countries where people are coming from”.
“I have long believed, by the way, that prevention and preventing people from traveling is one of the best ways to address this particular problem,” he said.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, since the beginning of the year, refugee arrivals in Italy by sea have decreased significantly: from January 1 to September 13, 44,675 people arrived, compared to 125,806 in the same period in 2023.
