Matteo Salvini is back in the Italian government as deputy premier and infrastructure minister. In his first act as minister, he met the head of Italy's coast guards. Opposition politicians accused the League leader of 'promoting a cynical propaganda campaign against migrants.'
Matteo Salvini has said Italian borders will be "respected" once again, talking about immigration after the new right-wing government headed by Giorgia Meloni took office over the weekend. The League leader argued that "it is unthinkable for ships from around the world to operate worldwide and then only arrive in Italy. Honors and burdens must be shared" during the 'Porta a Porta' show on public tv broadcaster Rai 1 on Monday night (October 24). He added: "If you have a Norwegian ship, you call Norway, if you have a German ship, you call Berlin."
In charge of ports, coast guards
Salvini is serving as deputy premier and minister of infrastructure and sustainable mobility in the new government.
On Monday, in his first act as minister, the deputy premier met with Admiral Nicola Carlone, the general commander of coast guards. Immigration was at the center of their meeting.
On the campaign trail, Salvini had pledged to halt irregular immigration and fight the activities of NGOs that carry out search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
While he was interior minister from 2018 to 2019, Salvini tried to close Italy's ports to NGO-run migrant-rescue vessels.
Now, his new position as infrastructure minister gives him a say in the running of Italy's ports. He will also be in charge of the coast guard. But most things concerning migration fall under the responsibility of the interior ministry, which is now being led by Salvini's former chief of staff Matteo Piantedosi.
Opposition leader: 'Cynical propaganda campaign against migrants'
The meeting between Salvini and the coast guards chief was criticized by members of the Italian opposition.
"I see that Salvini as infrastructure minister is promoting again his cynical propaganda campaign against migrants, meeting the general commander of coast guards," said Nicola Fratoianni -- the head of the SI party and a key lawmaker of the Green Left Alliance -- in a statement. "While children, women and men continue to die just a few miles from Italian coasts and shipwrecks go on and on."
"Instead of worrying about the presence of NGO ships in the central Mediterranean, Salvini and this government should work to deploy the naval assets of our country and of the EU for search and rescue [operations, so that] we don't continue to share the responsibility of an inhuman massacre", he added.
Riccardo Magi, the president of the More Europe party, said in a statement that "it is disconcerting that Salvini continues to propose illegitimate, inhuman and ruinous policies."
He asked the government instead to "act as a cabinet of true patriots and change the Bossi Fini" law, which regulates immigration. He argued that Italian businesses needed a higher number of foreign workers to be allowed into the country legally.
Moreover, he asked the new government "what it intends to do on the Italy-Libya Memorandum which the former government had proposed to change." The controversial memorandum signed in 2017 will be automatically renewed for three years if the government doesn't suspend it by November 2.