Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Thursday it’s “a possibility” that he could veto conclusions on migration reached at a summit of EU leaders.
“It’s a possibility that I don’t want to consider, but if we had to come to that, [then] we would not have shared conclusions,” he told reporters upon arriving at his first European Council summit, when asked whether he may reject the conclusions.
He added that the summit “will be a watershed moment for us” in terms of its implications for future migration policies.
“I have seen many demonstrations of solidarity,” he said, but “Italy needs concrete facts.” He added that “I’m ready to take on all the possible consequences.”
The topic of migration is set to be among the biggest and most divisive topics on the agenda at the summit, as leaders greatly disagree about how to handle it.
Italy’s coalition government — made up of the far-right League and populist 5Star Movement — has adopted a harder line on arrivals and pushed the issue to the top of their country’s, and hence the EU’s, agenda. Rome wants more help from the rest of the Continent, as the country has been the landing point for the majority of migrants, although data from the Italian interior ministry show that arrivals by sea have decreased by 77 percent in the first months of the year compared to the same period in 2017.