Meloni and Frederiksen raise the stakes on immigration as fronts with Madrid and Berlin remain open

While diplomatic tension with Spain over the Ceuta events remains high and Germany’s warning on Dublin transfers to Italy stays on the table, Premier Giorgia Meloni chose on Monday a different move from the defensive stance held in recent days: widening the front rather than narrowing it. Together with Danish Premier Mette Frederiksen, she published a joint message on Instagram and Facebook addressed not to the individual governments with which Italy is at odds, but to Europe as a whole.

The content of the message is a request to establish repatriation centres in third countries, described as an “innovative solution” to be located outside the perimeter of the European Union, along with other measures not specified in detail. It is a proposal the two leaders had already put forward separately in different venues, but which today takes the form of an explicitly shared initiative between a centre-right government and a social democratic one, presented as proof that the tough line on migration flows cuts across traditional political divides.

We do not accept uncontrolled immigration into Europe — Giorgia Meloni and Mette Frederiksen, Italian and Danish premiers

This news comes at the moment from a single source — the post published by the two premiers on their respective social media channels —; no independent confirmation is available regarding either the content or the context in which the decision to publish it jointly took shape.

The timing is not coincidental. The message arrives on the same day the diplomatic crisis with Spain linked to the Ceuta events remains unresolved, and shortly after Germany’s warning on Dublin transfers of migrants to Italy. Against this backdrop, the initiative with Frederiksen reads as an attempt to move beyond the logic of a bilateral tug-of-war with individual European partners, in order to reframe the repatriation issue as a shared policy matter to present to the Union as a whole.

It remains to be seen whether the message will be followed up institutionally, in the form of a formal proposal to Brussels, or whether it will remain a joint political declaration without immediate developments. Neither government indicated, in the post released on Monday, a timeline or a negotiating venue for advancing the proposal on repatriation centres in third countries. The two open issues with Spain and Germany, meanwhile, remain distinct: the crisis with Madrid over the Ceuta events has not been resolved, and the German warning on Dublin transfers has not received, at this point, a public response from the Italian government beyond the joint message released on Monday.