Uncontrolled immigration unsettles Italy

By Guy Dinmore in Rome , Nov 6, 2007-11-06

updated 1:41 a.m. ET, Wed., Nov. 7, 2007
Europe completely underestimated the scale of the exodus from Romania after the country's accession to the European Union this year, according to Romano Prodi, Italy's prime minister.

"Nobody could expect that [scale of influx]. Nobody was expecting the outflow from Romania [across Europe]," he told the Financial Times in an interview.

The Italian government is battling public anger over uncontrolled immigration, triggered by the murder last week of a 47-year-old woman outside a Rome station. A Romanian man was subsequently arrested and charged with sexual assault, robbery and murder.

In response to the public outcry, the government issued a decree letting local authorities expel from Italy EU nationals deemed a threat to public safety.

Asked how many nationals had entered Italy this year since Romania's entry into the EU on January 1, Mr Prodi replied: "Nobody knows." He said the figure of 500,000 given by Giuliano Amato, the interior minister, was an "exaggeration".

Mr Prodi defended the principle of free movement of EU citizens and argued that Italy desperately needed imported labour. But he admitted the European directive governing the free movement of EU citizens, drawn up when he was president of the European Commission, was inadequate.

"What I am asking of the European Union is to have common rules in order to have repatriation more effective, and to be more co-operative in all the side-effects of these movements [of people]," he said.

As a staunch defender of EU enlargement while Commission president from 1999 to 2004, Mr Prodi insisted that the expansion of the bloc had been more positive than expected. "I used to repeat that [enlargement] is the only way of exporting democracy," he argued.

Although Italy has only expelled a few EU citizens - nearly all of them Romanians - the decree unleashed an angry response and accusations of xenophobia from the government in Bucharest.

Calin Popescu Tariceanu, the Romanian prime minister, is due to visit Rome on Wednesday to deal with the crisis.

Italian officials have suggested that Romania is "dumping" unwanted members of its Roma minority on Italy and must exert greater control.

Walter Veltroni, the mayor of Rome and the designated successor to Mr Prodi as leader of the centre-left, sought to demonstrate his hardline credentials by ordering police to clean out immigrants living in hovels and boxes along the river Tiber. Hundreds have been driven out and many have returned on buses to Romania in recent days.

Eager to capitalise on the controversy and the government's one-vote majority in the Senate, members of the rightwing opposition are demanding mass deportations - which would go against EU rulings - while threatening to vote against the decree when it comes before a vote for extension in parliament.

Mr Prodi pointed to the close economic relationship developing between Italy and Romania, noting that more than 22,000 Italian companies are operating there, employing in excess of 600,000 Romanians.

The media failed to point out that the government had set labour quotas for immigrants, which this year total 278,000, mostly in industry, construction and care for the elderly, he said. He added employers were demanding more overseas workers and wanted more than 300,000 permits to be issued.

"I am convinced that this phenomenon of immigration is not temporary. The demography is so clear," Mr Prodi said.

A report this month by the Catholic charities Caritas and Migrantes estimated that Italy had a foreign population of nearly 3.7m, or 6.2 per cent of the total population. Romanians made up the largest group with an estimated 556,000.

Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved.

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