Italy will no longer be ‘Europe’s refugee camp,’ new Interior Minister says

4 Jun, 2018 12:14 / Updated 6 years ago

Italy's newly installed Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, on Monday promised tough action to reduce migrant arrivals and send back those who have already come, saying the country will no longer be “Europe’s refugee camp”. Salvini, is the head of the right-wing League and a Deputy Prime Minister in the Euroskeptic coalition. Two days after the government was sworn in on Friday, Salvini headed for Sicily, the main port of call for more than 600,000 migrants who have arrived from north Africa since 2014. “The party is over” for migrants in Italy, he said, before visiting a so-called “hotspot” or reception center in the port of Pozzallo, where boat-borne arrivals are registered, photo-identified and fingerprinted, Reuters reports. The League says the vast majority of migrants in Italy have no right to refugee status, and the country cannot afford to help them.