Migration was at the top of the agenda when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer met Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni in Rome on Monday (September 16). Starmer told the BBC ahead of the trip, "I've long believed that prevention and stopping people traveling in the first place is one of the best ways to deal with this particular issue."

Although the two leaders come from different sides of the political spectrum, according to reports on the BBC and Euronews, the center-left Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is "interested" in talking to Italy’s far-right Giorgia Meloni about Italy’s recent migration solutions, including Italy’s decision to establish offshore asylum processing centers in Albania.

The centers in Albania have not yet opened. They were due to do so this summer, but have suffered some delays, and are now reported to be "nearly ready" and should begin functioning in the next "few weeks." However, despite the scheme still being in its initial stages, the UK is looking at various options to try and help tackle the large numbers of migrants arriving on its shores.

Also read: What is the Italy-Albania deal on migration?

More migrants die in Channel

The meeting between the Italian and British leaders comes in the wake of news that a further eight migrants died in the Channel at the weekend while attempting to reach Britain by boat. According to the European news platform Euronews, Starmer is hoping that Italy’s "tough approach" can be replicated in the UK and "help..stop people fleeing war and poverty [from] trying to cross the English Channel."

Starmer’s Labour party took over government in July, following 14 years of Conservative rule. While Starmer previously criticized the Conservative plan to offshore asylum claims to Rwanda as a "gimmick" and a waste of money, it appears he is now considering implementing something not so dissimilar.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 22,000 migrants have crossed the Channel from France to the UK, marking a slight increase from the same period in 2023. According to Frontex, Channel crossings have increased 13 percent this year compared to 2023.

Across Europe’s borders, the number of irregular crossings has dropped by 39 percent this year, states Frontex. However, some crossing points, such as the West African routes, across the Atlantic to the Canary Islands and the Eastern land border have seen stark increases, of 123 percent and 193 percent respectively.

Also read: Eight die in attempted Channel crossing

Starmer promises: 'A new era of international enforcement'

Starmer’s language around migration is slightly different to his predecessors. He has promised "a new era of international enforcement to dismantle these [smuggling] networks, protect our shores and bring order to the asylum system."

Ahead of his trip to Rome, Starmer emphasized that his government would focus on "proven methods" rather than "gimmicks," according to Euronews.

Similar to Starmer, Meloni’s government also saw an increase in the number of migrants arriving by boat in Italy when they initially took power. But this year, after signing a series of deals with North African countries, the Italian Interior Ministry boasts that it has reduced the number of arrivals by around 60 percent compared to last year.

Some migrants arriving in Italy continue on to France and some some attempt to cross the Channel towards the UK. So, close links between the UK and Italy in terms of migration are deemed important for this reason too.

Also read: UK, the end of the Rwanda plan

Albanian deal

Although the Albanian deal is not yet working, Italy intends to process some adult male migrants in the Balkan country. Anyone deemed vulnerable, including women and children, will still be processed in Italy.

When asked specifically whether the UK would seek to replicate the Italy-Albania deal, Starmer reportedly responded: "Let’s see. It’s early days, I’m interested in how that works, I think everybody else is."

During the Italian trip, Starmer is due to tour Italy’s national immigration crime coordination center, alongside the newly appointed UK Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt. Hewitt is a former head of the UK’s National Police Chiefs’ Council. His role is intended to coordinate law enforcement and intelligence agencies across the UK to try and break the power of the people-smuggling gangs.

The Italian trip also follows trips Starmer has made to France, Germany and Ireland, aimed at restoring the UK’s links to its European neighbors. One of the problems the UK has faced since Brexit, in terms of its immigration policy, is that on exiting the EU, it ceased to be a party to the Dublin agreement, which would have allowed it to send back migrants and even asylum seekers who first entered the EU at another point.

Also read: Can Labour repair the UK's fragmented asylum system?

Further tri-lateral talks?

Italy hopes that when its centers in Albania are up and running, it can process up to 36,000 migrants per year. From the center, they have the chance to apply for asylum in Italy, but if refused, they will face deportation. This, reports the French news agency, Agence France Presse (AFP) is a key difference to Britain’s Rwanda plan, whereby anyone sent to Rwanda would not have been allowed to return to the UK as an asylum seeker.

According to the BBC, the Albanian government has suggested that its deal is exclusive to Italy. However, the UK and Albania have existing migration deals, made under the previous UK government, so it is not necessarily beyond the bounds of possibility that the UK and possibly even other EU countries might seek to make similar deals with Albania in the future.

Just after taking office, at a summit held at Blenheim Palace in July, Starmer held talks with his counterparts in both Italy and Albania. Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy also told the BBC’s Sunday program that the UK was indeed interested in discussing details of the Italy-Albania deal with Italy.

Also read: Why immigration is a major issue in the UK election

Italy has achieved 'dramatic reductions' in arrivals, says Starmer

Lammy added that the UK was also interested in exploring deals with Syria and Libya too, the BBC reported. EU migration specialist Alberto-Horst Neidhardt from the European Policy Center told the BBC: "Britain is exposed to the consequences of decisions in the EU, without having a say –and that weakens its capacity to manage migration flows."

Neidhardt added that he believed that because the British government hadn’t managed to seek "effective solutions with France --…it makes sense to turn to Italy for this new prime minister."

While at the immigration coordination center, Starmer told journalists, "I’m here to have discussions with the prime minister [Giorgia Meloni], about how we deal with unlawful migration," reported the Guardian.

Starmer added that in Italy, "there’s been some quite dramatic reductions. So, I want to understand how that came about." The politician added that he believed it was "down to the upstream work that’s been done in some of the countries where people are coming from."

More deals to come?

The British leader said he would be looking in to "how that upstream work went, looking, of course, at other schemes." Starmer said that he and Meloni had a "shared intent to work together on this trade, this vile trade, of pushing people across borders."

One of Starmer’s press spokespeople was asked at a UK government press briefing ahead of the trip if Starmer was at all worried about some of the upstream work, including Italy’s deal with Tunisia, which NGOs and international organizations have denounced, saying it leads to mistreatment of migrants.

The spokesperson told the press, according to the Guardian: "Obviously we take that incredibly seriously and want to be working more closely with countries upstream." The spokesperson added: "The principles that we’ll be following in everything that we do is that it is workable, affordable and in line with international humanitarian law. But it is vital that we stop people from starting these journeys, we’ve seen far too many deaths in the Mediterranean as well as the Channel."

During a joint press conference of the two leaders at the end of the visit, Meloni also described allegations that her deals were leading to mistreatment of migrants as " completely groundless," reported the BBC.

Starmer: 'An international approach to an international challenge'

The UK government believes that it is "incumbent upon us to take an international approach to an international challenge, to stop more lives being lost at sea, not just from the Channel, but also in the Mediterranean."

The spokesperson also confirmed that the UK government is not planning to introduce any further "safe and legal" routes for asylum seekers hoping to reach the UK, something that many organizations that work with migrants called on Labour to do once they took office.

Starmer’s government has also promised to increase the numbers of deportation flights they operate, reported the news agency Reuters.

Not everyone in Starmer’s party is on board with his intention to learn from Italy’s right-wing government. Labour MP Kim Johnson told the Guardian newspaper that she found it "disturbing that Starmer is seeking to learn lessons from a neo-facist government, particularly after the anti-refugee riots and far-right racist terrorism that swept Britain this summer."

Also read: Migrant workers face racism and threats as mob violence continues

With Reuters and AFP