France Urges Italy to Block Migration, Italians Want 'Mediterranean Marshall Plan'

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini (C), Interior minister Roberto Maroni (L) and Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa (R) pictured at a news conerence in Rome, March 3. EPA/BGNES

France has called upon Italy to check the influx of illegal immigrants into the EU from Tunisia just as Italy said a "Marshall Plan" for the Mediterranean was needed.

"We expect our Italian friends to play by European rules. It is the responsibility of the country that first receives them. We ask them to hold back those who turn up there, and that they take back those we send back," French Interior Minister Claude Geant, a close ally of President Nicolas Sarkozy, said, as cited by Al Ahram, as he visited the Italian border for talks with police and immigration officials

"The Italians are playing the game. We expect them to play it completely," he said, at a news conference in state offices in the city of Nice.

Italy, has already seen a tide of illegal immigration from Tunisia leading EU's border agency Frontex to deploy Sunday a special mission to assist the Italian authorities in dealing with the new arrivals, especially on the tiny southern island of Lampedusa entitled "Hermes".

There are growing concerns in the EU that illegal immigrants from Egypt and Libya will join those from Tunisia.

Meanwhile, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Fratini announced Italy is ready to pour on its own EUR 1 B of development aid into the Eastern Mediterranean.

Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, says that this is the amount Italy could come up with in order to "turn around debt in these countries."

"We have over 600 million credits that we could turn into investments for infrastructures, and if we add to that 300 million in credits and aid, that makes almost a billion euros at national level, which isn't bad," Frattini said Friday.

He has called for a "Marshall Plan" for the Mediterranean similar in principle to the US Marshall Plan that fueled the economist recovery of Western Europe after World War II.

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