Paolo Gentiloni
MILAN - The Italian government wants the EU to exert greater efforts concerning the central Mediterranean migrant route, which runs from Libya to Italy, Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said Friday. The minister was replying to journalists' questions after his speech at a conference on immigration, refugees and asylum policies at the Bocconi University in Milan, where he discussed the 'Migration Compact'. Gentiloni called for investment in African countries to be stepped up, ''with new instruments like 'Africa bonds''', and said that the countries receiving the investment should be required to put forth serious efforts to limit migration flows. He added that repatriation of migrants to safe countries should be ''ever more European'', but that migrants should not be repatriated to Libya. ''On these issues,'' he concluded, ''the Italian government is asking Europe for commitment similar to what it showed on the (migration, Ed.) route running from Turkey to Greece and the Balkans.''
