H.E. Mr. Giovanni Adorni Braccesi Chiassi:

I will answer the committee's questions. We are aware of the fact that it is much better to talk directly with the countries that the people are coming from. I am talking mainly about economic emigrants, because when people leave their countries for political reasons, those countries do not exist. We cannot talk to them. We see how serious the problem is in Libya - an agreement is always close but it collapses every day. There are certain countries that are very aware and willing to help to solve this matter, such as Morocco, Egypt and Lebanon. I was in Morocco at the end of the '90s and we had reached an agreement with Morocco that we would take 5,000 people from Morocco every year because Morocco had agreed to take back all of those who were entering Italy illegally. That will be a response to a global problem. I read that there are around 60 million migrants all over the world and Europe will need them.

I will answer the question. In Italy, we made the decision that refugees and migrants have to be distributed through different regions because they were concentrating mainly in the south of Italy. Public opinion acknowledges that there are jobs that Italians do not want to take and that only people coming from outside Europe will take these kinds of jobs. For a number of months there has been an increasing number of jobs given to people who come from outside the European Union.

There is a fear about integration and security. We have experienced a large number of immigrants in the past years coming from Albania and Romania, before Romania was part of the European Union, but those were coming from one country. These immigrants are coming from tens of different countries and they speak tens of different languages. How will they be integrated into Italy? There will be a problem of scholarship and how they will adapt to our rules. It is not an easy problem to solve. It is a problem that cannot be solved by blocking them because they will arrive one way or another. The problem has to be faced at a common level and we have to take into consideration the problems of the Italian people. Sometimes it is a struggle between poor people. There are Italians who are looking for houses but do not have them and they might get scared by all those people arriving and asking for the same thing.

It is a major political concern. The Catholic Church is doing quite a big job in order to explain and also to give a response. The Pope asked that every parish accept one family. It is the beginning of a solution to a problem, but it is a major concern. I believe there is a more positive attitude now that it is no longer just on the shoulders of Italy, Greece and certain countries. It is now on the shoulders of all European countries. Thank you.