Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Danish counterpart Mette Frederiksen have blamed uncontrolled immigration for rising crime and sexual violence in Europe and called for a sharp increase in deportations.
The two leaders set out their case in a joint message published on their social media accounts on August 10. They said they did not accept uncontrolled immigration into Europe and had pursued a strict migration policy at home and across the European Union.
Nobody could deny the negative effects of illegal immigration on European societies, they wrote, listing higher crime rates, growing pressure on public services and an erosion of public trust.
It was particularly serious, they said, when migrants with no right to remain committed violent crimes, trafficked drugs or were responsible for sexual violence. Ordinary people had paid the highest price and expected concrete action from their politicians.
Repatriation centres should be built in third countries alongside other solutions outside Europe, they argued. Rome is already in talks with Rwanda over taking in people expelled from Italy.
Together they had shifted the balance in how the European Convention on Human Rights is applied to foreign nationals who commit serious crimes, they said, and deportations should now rise. Some 27 Council of Europe member states signed a joint statement in December 2025 calling for the convention to be reworked to deal with migration.
The message went beyond irregular arrivals. Respect for national law had to go hand in hand with respect for European values, they wrote, and that applied to the millions of foreign nationals living legally in Europe.
Both said they were proud of Europe’s Christian cultural heritage and wanted to protect it. They expected people who chose to make Europe their home not to impose ways of life Europeans did not share.
Meloni leads the right-wing Brothers of Italy. Frederiksen is a Social Democrat whose party sits with Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE in the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament.
Both have led the criticism of the Spanish Government since about 72,000 people crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in north Africa in late July. Meloni suspended Schengen free movement for non-EU travellers arriving from Spain and Madrid answered with controls of its own.
Frederiksen returned to office on June 3 at the head of a minority coalition that includes the Green Left and the Social Liberals, both of which sit to her left on migration.
