Meloni Postpones Migrant Taxi NGO Regulations Until 2023 as Landings Continue

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has announced that the new security decree to regulate the activities of migrant taxi NGOs will not come into force until early next year, as over 100,000 migrants have entered illegally this year.

Prime Minister Meloni announced that the new decree would not be discussed on December 28th as originally planned in the Council of Ministers but would be postponed until the beginning of next year.

While the decree will regulate the activities of migrant taxi NGOs, it also looks to promote deportations and simplify asylum applications. According to Meloni, the delay is because she wants to personally take the time to go over the document and assess it herself, Il Giornale reports.

“We have confused the issue of refugees and that of immigration,” Meloni said this week and added, “We penalized those who wanted to respect the rules and work here,” while “those we welcome are, much more trivially, those who have the money to give to smugglers.”

The new decree is set to enforce new regulations on the activities of migrant taxi NGOs, which have been responsible for bringing over 10,000 migrants to Italy this year as they patrol the Mediterranean Sea looking for migrant boats.

Earlier this week, the Spanish taxi NGO Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario (Humanitarian Maritime Rescue) expressed concern over the new security decree, known as the “Flow Decree”, claiming it could force them to stop their operations.

“What will come to us is a frontal and quite violent attack. It is a war against NGOs. When we arrive in Italy they will sanction us with fines that will be unsustainable and we will not be able to pay them, which means that we will have to stop the boats,” the president of the NGO said.

So far this year, Italy has seen over 100,000 migrants arrive illegally, the largest number since 2017. Prime Minister Meloni has vowed to tackle the problem, even proposing a naval blockade in the Mediterranean, but so far, landings have continued at a steady and frequent pace.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.