The two countries signed a declaration providing for the creation of a cooperation unit in early 2025 to fight against migrant smuggling networks, as has existed between France and the United Kingdom since 2020.
The French and Italian governments agreed this Friday, October 4, to create a cooperation unit in early 2025 to exchange information on migrant smuggling networks, based on the model of a structure operating since 2020 between France and the United Kingdom. United.
On the occasion of a meeting of G7 Interior Ministers in Mirabella Eclano (south), French Minister Bruno Retailleau and his Italian counterpart Matteo Piantedosi signed “a declaration of intent laying the foundation” of this unity, according to a press release from the French ministry.
“The implementation of this new unit, strategically positioned in Ventimiglia”, in Italy, on the Franco-Italian border, is “the result of a discussion between the two countries for more than a year, and should be effective as soon as January 2025″, according to this press release.
Joint investigations to dismantle networks
The project is based on “the model of a similar Franco-British structure, the URO (Operational Research Unit), installed since July 2020 in the north of France to counter criminal groups organizing crossings, which are regularly deadly, in small boats to the United Kingdom”, explains the French ministry, for which the latter “has demonstrated its effectiveness by being at the origin of the dismantling of several dozen teams of human traffickers”.
The Franco-Italian URO will be attached to the Office for Combating Illicit Trafficking of Migrants (OLTIM) of the border police and will have the objective of “launching judicial investigations, often joint, aimed at dismantling the networks structuring illegal flows via Italy to all countries of the Union”.
Bruno Retailleau, in office for two weeks, has shown his desire to toughen up the fight against illegal immigration. Prime Minister Michel Barnier, however, somewhat nuanced the hard line of his Minister of the Interior by recalling on Thursday that it was he who “set the line” on this subject.
“I have great confidence that with the current French government, as has been the case in the past, there can be renewed collaboration, aware of the important role that we can play together in the European and international context,” he said. for his part commented the Italian Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi during a press conference.
