Silvio Berlusconi should be remembered for more than just his passion for football and sex. He was the first European leader this century to identity illegal immigration as an existential threat to the stability and cohesion of the continent.
Ironically, the former Italian prime minister’s infamous ‘Bunga-Bunga’ parties reportedly owed their name to a joke once told to Berlusconi by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, a man who was also acutely aware of Europe’s vulnerability.
The two leaders were close, a friendship that became politically important when Berlusconi was re-elected PM in April 2008. A significant factor in his victory was illegal immigration from Africa, which had been steadily rising since the start of the century. In the first six months of 2007, 5,378 migrants had landed on Italian soil, a figure that doubled in the same period in 2008.
Gaddafi saw instantly that he could exploit Berlusconi’s third term in office by blackmailing him. ‘Libya has been suffering in the struggle of warding off the flow of illegal migrants to Italy by depleting its material resources and spending huge amounts of money to protect Italian coasts from waves of illegal migrants,’ announced the Libyan interior ministry in May 2008. ‘Libya is no longer responsible for protecting Italian coasts from illegal migrants…because the Italian side did not make good on its commitment to provide support.’
Gaddafi saw he could exploit Berlusconi’s third term in office by blackmailing him
The summer was approaching, added the interior ministry, the most favourable season for crossing the Mediterranean, and their intelligence indicated that a record number of migrants had Italy in their sights.
Within two months, Berlusconi had declared a state of emergency as thousands of migrants landed on Italian soil. He also put in a call to Gaddafi; the upshot of their conversation was a promise from the Libyan leader to crack down on illegal immigration. In return, Italy pledged to Libya €3.4 billion (£3 billion) in various packages, including student grants, compensation for the second world war and several construction projects. Berlusconi visited Gaddafi in person to seal the deal and the two leaders announced that, in future, 30 August would be Libyan-Italian Friendship Day.
Although some migrants continued to arrive on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the closer cooperation between Italy and Libya reduced the numbers. Not only was Gaddafi preventing boats departing from North Africa, but he was accepting the return of migrant vessels stopped by the Italian navy in international waters. In 2009, Italy recorded 7,300 illegal entries from Africa, down from 32,000 the previous year.
Not everyone was impressed. The UN, human rights groups and the EU were outraged at what they regarded as an inhumane policy. The European Commission demanded an investigation into the practice of forced repatriation; Berlusconi countered by saying he was protecting Italy’s borders because the EU was incapable of coming up with a co-ordinated response to the growing numbers of migrants cross the Med. ‘We need more than words,’ Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini told Brussels. ‘This is a European problem.’
The EU’s criticism angered Gaddafi who, never one to miss an opportunity for personal enrichment, turned his talent for blackmail from Berlusconi to Brussels. On a visit to Rome in August 2010 – to celebrate Libyan-Italian Friendship Day – Gaddafi demanded €5 billion (£4.3 billion) from the EU to curb illegal immigration.
‘Tomorrow Europe might no longer be European…as there are millions who want to come in,’ he said during a ceremony in the Italian capital. ‘We don’t know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans…if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.’
Just over a year later, Gaddafi was dead and Libya had descended into a chaos from which it has yet to emerge. The Nato intervention that resulted in regime change was led by Britain, France and the USA but involved several other countries, one of which was Italy.
In July 2011, Berlusconi subsequently claimed he had been a reluctant participant. ‘I was against this measure,’ he said. ‘I had my hands tied by the vote of the parliament of my country. But I was against, and I am against this intervention, which will end in a way that no-one knows.’
Within five years of Gaddafi’s demise, half-a-million migrants had crossed the Med into Italy and the issue played an influential role in the 2018 Italian election. Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia party was upstaged by Matteo Salvini’s newly formed right-wing Lega, which won 125 seats, while Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy took 32 seats, 23 more than it managed in the 2013 election.
Immigration was also at the forefront of the 2022 election and Meloni’s party increased its representation to 119 seats as she became Italy’s first female PM. In a sense, she can thank Berlusconi for her rise to power. During campaigning for the 2018 election, his political opponents never let the electorate forget about his role in the ill-conceived Western coalition to topple Gaddafi. ‘If in Italy migrants are arriving, it’s because someone made war in Libya, and the premier was Berlusconi,’ said the centre-left Matteo Renzi, who had been PM from 2014 to 2016.
Meloni is now spending much of her time doing what Berlusconi did when he was PM: pressing the flesh with North Africa leaders in an attempt to enlist their help in stemming the flow of migrants across the Mediterranean.
Last month, she hosted Libyan General Khalifa Haftar in Rome to discuss the matter, as well as seeing what Italy could do to bring stability to a country that desperately needs it after 12 years of bloody anarchy. Now, as in 2008 and 2009, Italy is largely on its own, abandoned by Brussels and its European partners who are quick to criticise but slow to contribute any practical help.
There has been little grief on display for Berlusconi in the Anglophone media. As Bloomberg put it: ‘Before there was Donald Trump, before Viktor Orban, before Boris Johnson, there was Silvio Berlusconi.’
He was, so some claim, the progenitor of ‘populism’; but Berlusconi, for all his vanity and vulgarity, was also the European leader who first understood the extent to which mass immigration threatened stability of the continent.
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