Italy alone in making immigration an EU vote issue

Immigration has faded as an election issue in Europe but Italy, the first port of call for boatloads of desperate Africans, wants it high on the EU agenda and has made it central to the European election campaign.

Italy has warned that people living on the Mediterranean in "front-line" locations such as Sicily consider it a major problem and, if ignored by Brussels, could protest by abstaining from the weekend's election for the European Parliament.

"The European Union must understand this, or people in these areas will not vote in the European elections," Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said on a recent campaign visit to Naples.

Outside a few countries including Italy, Malta and the Netherlands, immigration has fallen off voters' radar since the last European vote in 2004, either because immigration rules have been toughened up or the focus is now on the economic crisis.

One EU-wide poll suggested it is twice as important an issue for Italians as the rest of Europe, with 69 per cent of Italians rating it top priority compared to an EU average of 31 per cent.

In the 27-nation bloc's largest member, Germany, the focus of European and federal elections is the economic crisis, said Klaus-Peter Schoeppner of pollsters Emnid.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's expulsions programme has led Jean-Marie Le Pen to complain that Sarkozy "has taken over the vocabulary and the doctrines of the National Front".

Spain's centre-left government, once the author of mass regularisation of illegal immigrants, is now encouraging them to leave by offering them Spanish welfare benefits back home.

In Britain, nationalist parties are expected to make headway in the European vote - but more because of low turnout and protest votes against sleaze in British politics.

In the Netherlands, right-winger Geert Wilders hopes his anti-Islamic rhetoric will win his Freedom Party a presence in the European assembly where it could campaign against Turkish EU membership talks like Belgium's far-right Vlaams Belang party.

But in Italy, illegal immigration is a central campaign issue for Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government, even though it has taken plenty of tough action already such as making illegal immigration a crime and turning back would-be immigrants at sea.

Italy argues that it is taking firm action on behalf of the entire EU, including countries far from the Mediterranean which would be the ultimate destination of many illegal immigrants.

"This does not just concern Sicilians or the Maltese but the whole EU, just like security or energy policy," said Mr Frattini.