France, Italy bid to defuse African migration row

ROME/PARIS: Italy and France will discuss changing the regulations governing Europe's border-free travel when President Nicolas Sarkozy visits Rome on Tuesday seeking to ease tensions over North African immigration.

The visit, part of a regular series of meetings between Italian and French leaders, follows deep differences over the issue between Paris and Rome, which have also been at odds over French takeover bids for Italian companies and policy in Libya.

A standoff at the Northern Italian border town of Ventimiglia, where French gendarmes have sent back Tunisian migrants trying to cross the frontier has been the visible symbol of growing acrimony between the two countries.

Each has accused the other of flouting the spirit of the Schengen treaty, intended to allow free movement within the European Union, as they have grappled with a wave of migrants arriving in the wake of the upheavals in North Africa this year.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said there was no question of scrapping the principle of free circulation within the EU but the treaty needed a "check-up."

"All treaties inevitably grow old," he told the daily Il Sole 24 Ore on Sunday.

"The Berlin wall of North Africa has come down and the context in which these treaties, and I think also the Lisbon treaty, were written has changed radically."

In France, anger over immigration has boosted the far-right National Front party ahead of elections next year. Paris is calling for reform of Schengen to make it easier to reinstate controls if an external crisis triggers a flood of migrants.

The treaty already allows the 25 member states to temporarily suspend border-free travel for security reasons.

"We must draw the lessons of this crisis together," Secretary of State for European Affairs Laurent Wauquiez said on Sunday.

"The solution is in greater integration but we also need an emergency brake in case of a major crisis."

So far this year around 25,000 migrants, most from France's former colony Tunisia, have arrived in southern Italy. Rome said it has been left to deal with the problem alone while Paris accuses Italy of trying to evade its responsibilities by allowing immigrants free transit across the border.

Officials hope that the two can put aside their differences and agree joint proposals to take to Brussels. Wauquiez said France supported the creation of a common border guard, and sharing patrols ships and computer systems.

ECONOMIC TENSIONS

But problems over immigration are not the only ones facing Sarkozy and his host, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The battle for control of Parmalat Italy's biggest listed food group in which French dairy group Lactalis has built up a stake of some 30 percent, has exacerbated tensions over a series of takeovers involving French and Italian companies including luxury group Bulgari and power group Edison.

Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti has tried to facilitate an Italian bid for Parmalat, a key buyer of milk from farmers who are an important constituency for Berlusconi's coalition partners in the Northern League.

Officials in Rome say Italy needs to protect the comparatively small number of large companies which can act as platforms supporting its many small firms and there is considerable suspicion about a French bid.

However, French officials say that cross-border investments between the two countries are relatively equal at about 30 billion euros each and they reject suggestions that French companies are doing anything untoward.

"There is emotion and there are realities, and the realities are the integration of the single European market," an official in Paris said, noting that France did not believe that Parmalat could be considered a strategic company.

Italian suspicions also extend to the campaign against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, with whom Berlusconi formerly cultivated close personal relations.

Although Italy is taking part in the campaign, which has been driven in large part by Sarkozy, and has joined France in recognising the main Libyan rebel movement, it remains wary about prospects after the fighting.