Italy drifts right

Italy’s far-right Northern League has promised to introduce mass deportations of asylum seekers to Africa. If elected, it would begin to force an estimated 400,000 migrants back to their countries of origin, including Nigeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

Guglielmo Picchi, a member of parliament who said he could serve as foreign minister or a senior foreign policy adviser in a Salvini government, said the party would use a mix of economic threats and incentives to speed up the deportation process.

“I don’t want to use the word sanctions but we have tools – economic tools – that we can use to put pressure on countries to accepts back migrants,” Picchi said.