Italy's president sharply rebukes Elon Musk over comments on X about migration court rulings

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, right, presents Italy's President Giorgia Meloni with an award during the Global Citizen Awards dinner, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Michelle Farsi, File)

ROME, Italy -

Italian President Sergio Mattarella sharply rebuked Elon Musk on Wednesday for weighing in on Italian court rulings that have stymied the government’s plans to process some asylum-seekers in Albania.

Musk, who is expected to have a top advisory role in Donald Trump’s new administration, wrote Tuesday on X that “these judges need to go.” He was referring to the latest Italian court ruling against right-wing Premier Giorgia Meloni’s Albania immigration deal.

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In a subsequent post on Wednesday, Musk wrote: “This is unacceptable. Do the people of Italy live in a democracy or does an unelected autocracy make the decisions?”

The posts concerned a Rome court's refusal to rule on a formal request to detain seven migrants rescued at sea and transferred to Albania for processing.

Monday's ruling, which resulted in the men being brought to Italy for processing, was the second judicial setback for Meloni’s much-touted plan to outsource to Albania the processing of some male asylum-seekers.

Mattarella didn’t cite Musk by name but — in an unusually piqued statement — made clear on Wednesday that he was referring to him. Italy's head of state demanded respect for the country's sovereignty, especially from other soon-to-be public officials.

“Italy is a great democratic country and … knows how to take care of itself while respecting its Constitution,” Mattarella said in a statement issued by his spokesman.

“Anyone, particularly if as announced is about to assume an important role of government in a friendly and allied country, must respect its sovereignty and cannot attribute to himself the task of imparting prescriptions,” the statement said.

Trump announced Tuesday that Musk, one of the most influential people around the U.S. president-elect, would help lead a Department of Government Efficiency, essentially an independent advisory panel to eliminate waste and fraud.

Musk is a supporter of Meloni and has met with her in Rome on a few occasions, and in September joined her at an awards ceremony on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Photos of them together made such news that Musk seemingly felt the need to tamp down speculation by posting “We are not dating.”

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Musk has a history of making provocative statements and sparring with leaders on X. Earlier this year, he posted messages insulting U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and saying the United Kingdom was headed for civil war. He has also clashed with a Brazilian supreme court justice over free speech, far-right accounts and purported misinformation on X, and also accused Venezuela’s socialist president, Nicolás Maduro, of “major election fraud” after that country’s disputed election.

The courts’ rulings have raised the ire of Meloni’s far-right-led government, which has been seeking strategies to ease the strain on Italy of the arrival of migrants seeking a better life in Europe. The government had held up the opening of the Albanian centres as a centrepiece of its immigration crackdown, also as a means of deterrence, and said they could be a model for Europe.

In both cases, Italian courts referred the cases to the EU court of justice in Luxembourg to rule if the countries of origin for the migrants are considered safe for repatriation. There is no word on when the European court might rule.

But as a result of the Rome court decisions, no migrant has yet been processed in the Albanian centres, which are budgeted to cost Italy 670 million euros (US$730 million) over five years to build and operate.

Italy's opposition says the money could be much better spent on reinforcing Italian-operated migrant processing centres, while human rights groups say the outsourcing of asylum processing contravenes international law.

The centres opened in October after a months-long delay, because crumbling soil at one of the facilities needed to be repaired. They are run by Italy and are under the country's jurisdiction, while Albanian guards provide external security.

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