It was enough to read the notes on the website of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “safe travel”, to discover that Italian tourists «are recommended to avoid non-essential trips to Egypt in places other than Cairo and Alexandria, the Red Sea coast, the tourist areas of Upper Egypt and those of the Mediterranean Sea, where the threshold of attention must still be maintained high since, although subject to control by the Security Authority, they cannot be considered immune from possible threats”. And if the country of the pyramids is dangerous for travel, the Government wanted to include it together with Bangladesh, to avoid international protection, among those considered safe. International laws, however, in particular the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council which establishes a common EU list of safe countries of origin which is also binding for Italy.
No interference from the judiciary, which Salvini immediately attempted to brand as “left-wing” in politics, but only the application of the laws to which, as the secretary of the ANM Santalucia also explained, “everyone including the government is subject”.
Furthermore, given the imminence of the sentence, one wonders why one could not wait for its enactment before spending the Italians’ money on a trip that turned out to be as expensive as it was useless. Large deployment of vehicles to transfer 16 migrants to Albania. Then, when during the checks (which evidently had not been carried out carefully before departure), two turned out to be minors and two were fragile, four were repatriated to Italy. On the afternoon of Saturday 19th, however, the other 12 are expected to return on board a Coast Guard vessel.
And we wonder if the cost of this entire operation could not have been allocated to Italian courses and integration projects. Perhaps it would have achieved less in terms of visibility and propaganda, but more for the safety of Italian citizens too.