Italy and France, Old Frenemies, Are Squabbling Again

(Bloomberg) -- All it took was a few words from a French minister on the radio to send relations between Rome and Paris into a tailspin - again.

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France’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, said in an interview with RMC radio Thursday that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s team was a “far-right government” picked by the friends of France’s nationalist firebrand Marine Le Pen, and was “incapable of fixing Italy’s migration problems.”

It was enough to cause Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani to cancel a trip to meet his French counterpart, Catherine Colonna, and for Matteo Salvini, the most raucous member in Italy’s government, to say he “wouldn’t take lessons on immigration” from the French.

France and Italy, the second and third largest economies in the European Union respectively, are no strangers to diplomatic spats and their leaders have bickered in public on issues ranging from migration to extradition requests.

Their latest dispute is ill-timed, ahead of a Group of Seven meeting in Japan where Western allies are seeking to present a common stance on China and the war in Ukraine.

“I’m not going to Paris for the planned meeting,” Tajani wrote on Twitter. “The insults to the government and to Italy spoken by the minister” Darmanin “are unacceptable. This is not the spirit in which common European challenges should be tackled.”

Darmanin had been responding to a question about criticism from the new head of Le Pen’s party, Jordan Bardella, who traveled to Italy last month and slammed the French minister and French President Emmanuel Macron for not taking a tougher stance on migration.

France’s top diplomat, who called Tajani after the incident, sought to calm the situation, issuing a statement saying that the relationship between the two countries is based on mutual respect.

Since Meloni replaced Mario Draghi, a close personal friend of Macron, as Italian premier last year, relations between the neighbors have become rocky once again, mainly due to her right-wing affiliation, which makes her close to Le Pen — the French president’s nemesis in the last two elections.

Paris and Rome have regularly been at odds over migration. Last year, after Meloni’s election, France slammed Italy for flouting international law by refusing to allow a boat carrying migrants to dock in its ports.

In 2018, a junior member of Macron’s cabinet said Italian migration policy “makes you vomit.” At the time, it was overseen by Salvini, Meloni’s junior coalition partner and leader of the League party.

“I’m proud to be friends with Marine Le Pen and be in Giorgia Meloni’s government, and I won’t take lessons on immigration from someone who sends women, children and men back to Italy, continuing instead to harbor killers and terrorists who should return to Italy,” Salvini said, referring to France’s refusal to extradite 10 Italian terrorists.

Salvini also caused anger in Paris in 2019 when he publicly threw his support behind the Yellow Vest protesters, who roiled Macron’s first term.

In February, Meloni criticized Macron over a dinner he hosted with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, saying it was inappropriate that she wasn’t invited.

The Quirinal Treaty, a cooperation pact that Macron signed to great fanfare in 2021 with Draghi, came into effect this year, easing the way for the countries to work together on issues such as migration, trade deals, and relations with Libya. As part of that joint declaration, the neighbors also pledged stronger cooperation in areas including aerospace, raw materials and green energy.

This is also not the first time that Macron’s interior minister has risked undermining diplomatic relations with brash statements aimed at a domestic audience.

Last year, he slammed Liverpool supporters for creating havoc during the Champions League final when the French police force he oversees failed to handle crowds at Paris’s main stadium and was accused of using heavy-handed tactics, bringing politics back to the soccer field.

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