Libyan Immigrants Becoming Italian Immigrants

Others never reached here. More than 600 died last week when their unstable boat broke apart off the Libyan coast, and three unidentified African men died off the coast of Lampedusa on Sunday during a night landing in rough waters.

Earlier this year, about 24,000 Tunisians traveled through Lampedusa, most seeking work in Europe. But now the situation has changed. More than 9,000 people have arrived from Libya since its unrest began, most of them sub-Saharan Africans and South Asians who had been working there, including more than 2,000 in the past week. Almost all are deemed refugees, and most are seeking asylum.

Italian officials and human rights workers say the sharp uptick since the end of March, when NATO took over military operations in Libya, and the fact that most of the boats, including unseaworthy ones, have left from ports in or near Tripoli, Libya’s capital, is a sign that the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi is turning a blind eye to — or possibly even aiding — their departure as a form of protest against the NATO bombing raids.

In an interview on Friday, Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, said that the Qaddafi government had long used immigration as a form of “retaliation toward Europe and Italy.”

“This is not an immigration to us just out of desperation, which is a constant for these people who are refugees and deserve refugee status in 95 percent of cases, but a criminal tool used by the Qaddafi regime,” Mr. Frattini told Corriere della Sera’s Web television, adding that the strategy could be used as evidence against Colonel Qaddafi in the International Criminal Court.

The surge comes at a time when Europe is increasingly divided over immigration, with right-wing parties gaining traction. On Thursday, Denmark provoked criticism and possible legal proceedings when it said it would reintroduce controls at its borders with Germany and Sweden, warning of crime spilling across.

Here in Italy, the concern is that the Libyan unrest has unraveled a 2008 bilateral treaty in which Italy pledged $5 billion over 20 years in exchange for Libya’s preventing immigrants from leaving — which it has done by means that have been criticized by human rights groups.

Some immigrants who arrived here on Sunday said that after they saw last week’s shipwreck off the Tripoli coast, they did not want to board a ship leaving Tripoli but had been forced to do so by armed men, according to Laura Boldrini, the spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy.

The size of the ships arriving in Lampedusa from ports near Tripoli — some carrying as many as 800 passengers — is taken by Italian officials as another sign of Libyan complicity, or at least permission.

“It’s not that they’re put on boats, but you have to remember that ports are officially controlled by Libyan police,” Alfredo Mantica, an Italian under secretary of state responsible for relations with Europe, the Balkans and Turkey, said in a telephone interview.

“First they slept on the beach and tried to hide, and authorities pretended to check,” Mr. Mantica added. “Now there’s not even the theater of pretending there are checks.”

This week, Prime Minister Baghdadi Mahmudi of Libya said that NATO’s military intervention had prevented Libya from patrolling its coasts, as it had done under the 2008 treaty with Italy.

“We say to Europe that we can no longer do what we used to do,” The Guardian newspaper reported Mr. Mahmudi as saying. “And that’s because NATO has ruined our coastal defenses.”

But the situation appears more complicated. This week, a well-respected Italian immigration researcher wrote in the Italian newspaper L’Unità that a senior officer in the Libyan Navy, Zuhair Adam, was now helping to organize boatloads of immigrants to Italy from a military port near Tripoli. The newspaper said he had been trained by the Italian authorities in coastal patrols under the treaty.

 

French and Italian Leaders Seek Tighter Controls on Migration

The appeal, in a joint letter to the president of the European Commission, represented a remarkable request to change a pact that has become one of the European Union’s hallmark agreements. Under the treaty, which dates from 1985, 25 European Union member nations dismantled border controls for their own citizens and citizens of other countries.

Analysts said it was highly unlikely that the European Union would revise the agreement, and many said the joint request appeared to be aimed more at reducing political tensions between and within the two countries.

The looser borders have begun to pose problems of illegal immigration, as immigrants who arrive in one European Union member state can travel freely to others. The joint request reflected the severity of the migration crisis — in practical terms as well as for Italy and France’s domestic politics, in which anti-immigrant parties have substantial influence.

“Neither of us wants to deny Schengen, but in exceptional circumstances, we think there should be variations to the Schengen treaty,” Italy’s prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, said at a joint news conference here with President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, after weeks of tensions.

“We want Schengen to work, and to make sure that it works, it has to be reformed,” Mr. Sarkozy added.

In a joint letter to José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, the two leaders called on the European Union to “examine the possibility of temporarily establishing internal border controls in the case of exceptional difficulties in handling common external borders, on the basis of conditions to be defined in the future.”

France and Italy also called on the European Union to broaden the role of its border agency, Frontex, to allow it to repatriate illegal immigrants, and to “redefine” Europe’s regulations for immigrants from third countries. Under current regulations, the European country where immigrants first arrive is responsible for determining their status.

Faced with the likelihood of a wave of immigrants arriving in Europe from Libya, they also called for a common European Union policy on those seeking political asylum. Each country currently has its own standards.

In recent weeks, Italy has been reluctant to become involved in the intervention championed by France to oust Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from Libya, a former Italian colony. France has been reluctant to admit third-country immigrants from Italy — most of them from Tunisia, which historically has had close ties to France.

Italy infuriated France by issuing some Tunisians travel papers allowing them to leave Italy for France, which has tried to block them at its borders with Italy.

Rachel Donadio reported from Rome, and Alan Cowell from London.

 

Sarkozy Backs Italian Official to Lead Central Bank

 

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said he would support a respected Italian monetary official, Mario Draghi, to succeed Jean-Claude Trichet when he steps down later this year. Mr. Sarkozy made his unexpected announcement at a joint news conference in Rome with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy.

But in the political brinksmanship common with appointments at top European institutions, Mr. Sarkozy’s move may have made it harder for Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany to endorse Mr. Draghi.

Germany’s finance ministry, led by Wolfgang Sch?uble, has recently warmed to the idea that Mr. Draghi is the best-qualified person for the job. But Mrs. Merkel faces a delicate task in preparing German voters for the prospect of an Italian’s having responsibility for keeping European inflation under control and managing the fate of the euro.

Mr. Sarkozy, though, expressed no such reservations.

“France will be very happy to support an Italian for the presidency of the E.C.B.,” he said. “I know Draghi well. We support him not because he is an Italian but because he is a man of quality.”

Mr. Sarkozy made the announcement without consulting Mrs. Merkel, according to a German official who insisted on anonymity.

The European Central Bank’s role in fighting inflation is a major preoccupation for Germany, and Mrs. Merkel retains an effective veto over the appointment, which is scheduled to be decided at a summit in June.

Mrs. Merkel had been hoping that an inflation-fighting German, or a banker from a North European country, would take the helm from Mr. Trichet, who is retiring in October. But her preferred candidate, Axel A. Weber, the former president of the German central bank, took himself out of the running earlier this year. Mr. Weber resigned from the Bundesbank in February.

Mr. Weber’s exit pushed Mr. Draghi’s candidacy to the forefront, despite widespread perceptions, particularly in Germany, that people from Mediterranean countries are not as prudent and responsible with money as those from northern nations.

Despite that stereotype, in the corridors of finance Mr. Draghi, governor of the Italian Central Bank, is widely respected as an experienced economic policy maker with sterling credentials and a knack for navigating turbulent political waters.

But Mr. Sarkozy’s announcement, by appearing to pre-empt Mrs. Merkel, could complicate the process of selecting the next central bank president.

Mr. Sarkozy’s remarks were all the more surprising because both he and Mrs. Merkel have sought to forge a closer relationship to keep the euro from unraveling amid the debt crisis.

They have also worked to overcome differences in their approaches to the central bank. Germany wants to keep the bank free from politics, while France, according to German officials, is more interested in influencing it.

It is not the first time Mr. Sarkozy has bewildered a crucial European partner by announcing policy without giving advance notice. But French officials insisted that they had been encouraged to support Mr. Draghi after Mr. Sch?uble appeared to endorse him; they expect Mrs. Merkel to ultimately support him as well.

In return, France expects Germany to back a Frenchman for the seat that Mr. Draghi would vacate on the bank board, said senior French officials who spoke anonymously because of the political sensitivity of the matter.

Mr. Draghi has a reputation as a consensus builder — an important skill when running a central bank. Mr. Weber dropped out of the running in part because he was out of step with other members of the bank’s policy-making committee.

Mr. Draghi, serious and direct, is also acutely sensitive to Germany’s preoccupation with fighting the specter of inflation, and has spent the last few months underscoring his inflation-fighting credentials. In a rare interview in February, he said monetary policy should “first and foremost be geared toward price stability.”

The central bank recently raised interest rates by a quarter percentage point, a move Mr. Draghi supported. Analysts expect the bank to lift rates perhaps twice more this year.

That policy has come under fire from some experts who warn that higher rates will choke off the faltering recovery in some countries. But Mr. Draghi’s firm position on inflation has helped endear him to Mr. Sch?uble, the German finance minister. He sees Mr. Draghi as someone who can guide a strict fiscal and monetary policy while keeping meddling politicians at bay, according to a German finance official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak on the record.

Mr. Sch?uble also holds the view that choosing a central banker from a southern European country would send a good signal to its troubled neighbors, the official said, because it might show that the politics and economics of the 17-member euro zone are not driven by northern countries alone.

If Mr. Draghi got the job, he would have to navigate the tricky financial and political imperatives of bailouts for the most stricken European countries. He would also have to weigh how much support the central bank can and will continue to give to troubled banks in countries like Ireland and Spain.

Mr. Draghi seems to have managed to overcome reservations about his role as a managing director at Goldman Sachs from 2002 to 2005. The investment bank was the lead manager for a 2001 derivatives transaction that allowed Greece to dress up its books in a way that brought it into the euro club, but Mr. Draghi has made clear that he was not directly involved.

On another monetary policy issue, Mr. Draghi has discreetly voiced concern about the central bank’s continuing intervention in markets for European government bonds. He emphasized that intervention was justified only to make sure that the bank maintained its influence over interest rates, and not as a form of economic stimulus or stealth financing for overindebted governments.

Judy Dempsey reported from Berlin and Liz Alderman from Paris. Katrin Bennhold contributed.