Sánchez reinterprets Meloni’s plan to avoid the trend of expulsions from the rest of Europe

The crisis required an ambitious plan woven by Meloni herself and the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosian independent politician, but a close friend of the leader of the Northern League, Matteo Salvini: In January 2024, an agreement was announced with a number of African countries (Tunisia, Morocco, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Mozambique, Egypt, Congo, Ethiopia and Kenya) to invest up to €5.5 billion in their countries. The deal, dubbed Mattei Plannamed after Enrico Mattei, the Italian oil businessman who was instrumental in Italy’s post-war economic revival, was designed to improve the living conditions of residents in those countries to prevent mass exoduses to the north.

Of course, there were those who thought that what was being done, in practice, was to buy the will of these governments to do their part in the process. There must have been something, of course. In any case, it worked. In the eight months of 2024, Italy has gone from receiving 113,469 illegal immigrants to dealing with 40,138, according to data from the Meloni government itself. This is a decrease of 64.6%. Although the figures remain objectively high, the number of unaccompanied minors has plummeted by 300% And it is easy to see the hand of African governments opening or closing the tap.

The Mattei Plan was joined by other measures of collaboration with the countries of origin: Italy has agreements with Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, the countries from which most of its illegal immigration comes, to be able to return “immediately” those citizens of those countries who do not meet the requirements (among them, paying a 5,000 euro deposit upon entry) set by the government. It has also been the first EU country to outsource refugee receptionwith the opening of a centre for illegal immigrants in Albania.

Sánchez’s “circular migration”

Despite the obvious political differences, it is easy to see some similarities in Pedro Sánchez’s trip to Mauritania, Gambia and Senegal with the Italian Mattei Plan. Firstly, the need to act in the countries of origin, as Alfredo Pérez-Rubalcaba had already warned during his time as Minister of the Interior in the Zapatero government. The idea is to combine financial aid for local projects – something that has already been done in Morocco, for example – with the offer of specific jobs to encourage legal and orderly immigration.

In addition to the €500,000 aid to improve border security – a seemingly unconvincing figure – Sánchez has offered Mauritania the possibility of hiring part of the 250,000 workers that AIReF has calculated are needed each year to maintain the current welfare state. The exact type of work offered has not been made public, nor the industry to which they would belong, nor the conditions, but there is the candy and it is hoped that Mauritania will savor it with pleasure and close its ports tight. Once their contracts are finished, Workers would return to Mauritaniain what has been called “circular migration”.

The importance of Mauritania, like that of Senegal, is as obvious for Spain as Tunisia, Libya or Egypt are for Italy: a large part of the illegal immigrants who are crowding the Canary Islands these days leave from its ports. From Nouakchott to Maspalomas there is approximately half the difference as from Madrid to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Dakar is not much further away. If Spain manages to stem the flow, it will be easier for it to maintain its reception measures, which They include the prohibition of “hot” returns and state guardianship of all unaccompanied minors, whether or not they prove their true age. This would mitigate the political impact on their electorate.

On the way to a record-breaking 2018

So far this year, Spain has welcomed 31,695 illegal immigrants. We would already be above the total figures for 2022 and on track to exceed those for 2023 (56,852, of which 39,910 arrived in the Canary Islands). The record of 2018 could even be surpassed, when 64,298 people entered our country illegally, as far as we know. In any case, these are numbers that are fortunately very far from the legal immigrants living in our country.

In fact, in Spain, Up to 13.5% of citizens have foreign nationalityjust over six and a half million. If we add those born in a foreign country but who have acquired Spanish nationality, we reach 8.2 million, that is, 17.1% of the total. Despite the political hubbub that is usually formed in this regard, the truth is that 40 of the 48 million inhabitants living in Spain were born in Spain.

However, if we compare our figures with those of the European Union, the truth is that we are above the community average (9.2% foreign population) and, if we only count countries with more than ten million inhabitants, we would occupy third place after Germany and Belgium. Other countries, with a colonialist tradition, such as France either United Kingdomcurrently outside the Union, are experiencing an upsurge these days not so much in the arrival of immigrants but in their radicalization and in that of the nationalist parties that call for their expulsion. The same can be said of Nordic countries such as Sweden either Denmarkwho have never seen migration phenomena very well.

“Outsourcing” is the European preference

In France, the government Macron is being harshly criticized for its alleged “weakness” towards illegal immigrants. This is one of the usual arguments of Marine Le Pen, Eric Zemmour and the French radical nationalist right. It is true that, with a significant percentage of the population of Muslim origin, the problem of integration into the common culture has always been a problem, since the 1960s, with the risk of ghettos forming in large cities, especially in peripheral districts where crime has always been a way of life, regardless of nationality.

However, France’s problem with immigration is more legal than political: In January of this year, a new law was passed, tightening the requirements for staying in the country and limiting the right to family grouping. Up to 35 of the 86 articles of the law, approved by the National Assembly with the votes of the right and the extreme right, were annulled by the Constitutional Council because they were considered to be contrary to the Magna Carta. Every liberal state will find itself faced with this contradiction: the guarantee of individual rights will be above any legislation against a group.

That is not to say that alternatives are not being sought and that the rise of the “alt-right” across the continent is not exacerbating the migration problem. Recent the riots in England provoked by the collective hysteria against immigrants… a country that, on the other hand, also “externalizes” the management of part of its irregular immigration: if Italy sends them to Albania, the United Kingdom sends them to centres in Rwanda and then decides on a case-by-case basis. In fact, the Labour Prime Minister himself, Keir Starmerannounced this Wednesday his own copy of the “Mattei Plan”: aid and investments worth 84 million pounds (around 100 million euros) in African and Middle Eastern countries.

Outsourcing, that is, handling the problem in third countries, a compromise between direct expulsion and unrestricted reception, is currently the fashion among most European countries. In May this year, Denmark led a request from fifteen countries – including Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland and the Baltic republics – to be able to send their immigrants to associated states outside European borders. In fact, the Danish government recently also limited asylum requests from Syria, which remains the origin of the majority of cases of irregular immigration in Europe, far more than African countries.

Putin’s hand in the Sahel

Added to all this are other geopolitical issues. In November 2021, thousands of illegal immigrants, most of them of Afghan and Syrian origin, stood on the border between Belarus and Poland with the intention of entering the European Union. As soon as it became known that it was all a Kremlin ploy to destabilise the EU’s eastern border, Poland refused to take in any of the alleged refugees, who had to return to their countries or stay in Belarus.

Immigration control is power, and it is not just the mafias that are involved in this, but also some very specific states. Russia and Chinafor example, are behind the vast majority of Railway and port infrastructure in Africa and Asia. In some countries, as seen recently in Mali or in the Central African RepublicThey remove and install governments or at least dictate their policies. The Wagner Group, which rose to fame in the war in Ukraine, was always a mercenary group intended to mediate human trafficking in Africa and Syria, above all.

Under its current name – Africa Corps – and with direct control from Moscow, The former Wagner Group controls the Sahel and provides military aid to Niger and Burkina Faso. The Sahel, a corridor that runs from Eritrea to Mauritania itself, forms the route through which most of the African and Asian immigration passes. As long as Putin continues to offer everything he offers, it is difficult to think that Sánchez’s 500,000 euros will be of any use, although it is good to try.

In other words, apart from the measures taken in the host countries, the possible outsourcing of procedures or agreements with the countries of origin, there is a political problem behind it that is difficult to solve. It cannot be a coincidence that 2023 and 2024 have been such horrible years just after Russia declared a trade war on the rest of Europe in 2022. And vice versa.