France is imposing tight border controls on neighboring Italy to make them turn away refugees. For a long time, the EU has been working towards opening its internal borders, but the refugee crisis has made that goal more difficult to achieve.
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00:00 [Music]
00:13 I want to go to France.
00:15 [Music]
00:19 France should be ashamed.
00:21 That's inhuman.
00:23 [Music]
00:29 Sébastien Ollerat, the mayor of Bré-sur-Roya, in south-east France,
00:33 wishes visitors outside his community's tourist office all the best.
00:37 The town of over 2,000 overlooks the Mediterranean Sea
00:41 in the border region between France and Italy.
00:44 I'm looking for the brochures, maps and travel guide for our Alcôtre-EU project.
00:56 Alcôtre stands for the Southern Alps, Côte d'Azur region.
01:00 This European Union project subsidizes cross-border cooperation
01:04 between French and Italian municipalities,
01:07 dismantling the borders yet further.
01:10 We rely on close connections with Italy.
01:16 The beach closest to Bré is in Ventimiglia, in Italy.
01:19 For skiing, we go to Limone, in Italy.
01:22 We cannot get by without cross-border relations.
01:26 The border region combines spectacular mountain scenery
01:30 with plenty of French-Italian history.
01:33 Until the 19th century, this was the most important trade route
01:37 from Piedmont to the Mediterranean.
01:40 The northern Royale Valley was part of Italy during World War II,
01:44 and the border was disputed until 1947.
01:47 Today, the Italian fortresses are decaying.
01:50 More than 70 years after the war, there's nothing to suggest
01:53 that the French-Italian border runs here.
01:56 It's a border-free Europe.
01:59 Southward, toward the Mediterranean,
02:05 the route leads past old customs and border crossings.
02:08 French and Italian, both are crumbling.
02:11 First, the customs officers, and then the border police too,
02:17 disappeared from the European Union's internal borders.
02:20 No passports are checked here anymore.
02:23 Or so it seems.
02:25 But in the EU, the situation an hour's drive south at the Mediterranean
02:29 is only allowed in exceptional cases.
02:32 For years, France has been guarding its border between Ventimiglia, in Italy,
02:36 and Montaigne, on the Côte d'Azur.
02:39 The French border police are working at an internal European Union border crossing.
02:44 Some time ago, the border post was even expanded,
02:47 with a container where France can detain illegal migrants for 24 hours.
02:52 Refugees and migrants, mainly from African countries, are the reason.
03:04 Most reach Ventimiglia via the Mediterranean and southern Italy.
03:16 It's inhuman.
03:18 Really inhuman.
03:22 The French don't want them. Nobody does.
03:25 They send them back to the border.
03:27 Not people like us, but people who have fled their countries and come here.
03:31 Homeless people have been on the streets of Ventimiglia for years now,
03:39 many of them young people.
03:41 They keep hoping to find a way through the border.
03:44 Do you want to go to France?
03:46 Yes, I want to go to France.
03:48 Did you try to cross the border?
03:50 Yes, I tried.
03:52 The police drive them out of the city centre.
03:57 The Italian government in Rome has refused to provide state support for the people here,
04:02 and blames France for the misery.
04:04 Many in Ventimiglia agree.
04:06 France should be ashamed.
04:10 It's not fair.
04:12 It's not right that we Italians have to take in all these masses.
04:16 The authorities closed the only reception centre three years ago
04:21 during the Covid pandemic for fear of infection.
04:24 It was never reopened.
04:26 Only the Catholic Caritas charity hands out food for two hours in the morning.
04:31 In the early evening, volunteers cook for the homeless.
04:34 One of them is building contractor Filippo Lombardo.
04:38 He's agreed to help for a year.
04:42 On average, 100 to 150 more come to Ventimiglia every day.
04:48 Ventimiglia is a stop on the way.
04:53 Despite the guarded border,
04:55 migrants manage to cross into France again and again.
04:58 The Roya River flows into the Mediterranean here.
05:03 In the southern Alps, the river draws tourists and summer hikers,
05:07 as does the French town of Bré-sur-Roya.
05:11 Since 2014, the European Union has subsidised the border region
05:15 with more than 200 million euros for tourism,
05:18 joint nature conservation and cross-border cooperation
05:21 among mountain communities.
05:23 We've created tourist brochures, information plaques and this website,
05:32 which highlights the different communities
05:34 throughout the Roya and Verminagne territory
05:37 and their various monuments.
05:40 One such monument in Bré's Italian twin town of Borgo San Dalmazzo
05:48 commemorates over 300 Jewish people from all over Europe
05:52 who were deported from here to Auschwitz.
05:55 Italians, French, Germans, Dutch.
05:58 Most had fled the Nazis first to the south of France
06:02 and then to the mountains on the Italian side,
06:05 and they ended up imprisoned here in a concentration camp.
06:09 The companion exhibition is designed to inspire reflection
06:13 beyond the deportations.
06:15 This panel is titled "The Desperate Escape Through the Mountains".
06:20 Many of the locals here had hidden fleeing Jews.
06:23 Exhibition director Roberto Bianco draws a parallel to the present day.
06:31 We forget what we should have learned from history,
06:35 the set of values upon which our Europe was founded.
06:39 And that is our humanity when we are confronted with issues of migration.
06:44 On Thursday, Filippo Lombardo cooks dinner for the migrants
06:53 in the parking lot in Ventimiglia.
06:55 He, his wife Dana and their friends have been helping once a week
06:59 for over half a year.
07:01 The volunteers exchange the latest information via text messages.
07:10 Right now, many from Eritrea, Somalia and especially Sudan are in the city.
07:16 With all these wars on around the world now,
07:23 the families who can afford it take their children and go.
07:28 They say traffickers are already waiting for the refugees
07:31 at the Ventimiglia train station.
07:33 The volunteer cooks try to warn the migrants about the criminals.
07:37 Often they've already heard from Lampedusa who will arrive here and when.
07:44 They know their surnames and whether they have money.
07:48 The traffickers only need one try to get the migrants to leave.
07:55 Using a path off the main road to France that everyone in Ventimiglia knows about.
08:00 The route is easily reached but dangerous.
08:03 It leads straight across the highway.
08:06 Before setting out, they leave behind their last belongings,
08:10 hoping that if they're caught, the French border patrol won't find anything
08:14 to prove that they had just come from Italy.
08:21 Now the volunteers have spent three hours cooking with the migrants,
08:26 counting the shopping and preparation time.
08:29 It's very spicy, nice and hot.
08:32 Many people like that, salty and spicy.
08:35 Time is fleeting.
08:38 Down in the parking lot in town, other volunteers are getting ready to provide meals.
08:43 The various helpers depend on one another.
08:47 I always say as people we are already born into problems.
08:52 I'm a migrant too, an Italian, but still a migrant.
08:58 My mother left Calabria in southern Italy in 1956 and came here.
09:07 She told me that she was a migrant.
09:13 She taught me that if three people can eat at one table, five or six can too.
09:21 Dinner is provided every weekday at 7pm.
09:28 We try to strike up a conversation, but hardly any of the migrants are willing to speak on camera,
09:35 mainly for fear of being deported.
09:38 The EU still applies the rule that refugees and migrants who enter
09:42 have to remain in the country where they first arrived,
09:45 so many here get very cautious when asked if they're headed for France.
09:50 No, I don't have intention to go to France.
09:56 You want to stay here?
09:58 I want to stay here. Definitely if I get accommodation here.
10:02 And are you also from Sudan?
10:05 Yes, I'm from Sudan. That's why we are coming here.
10:08 We wouldn't say that we are here for attention or maybe getting something,
10:15 but because of the insecurity that we are facing in Sudan
10:19 and the killing of the civilians in Sudan, that's why we came here.
10:24 Usually the Italian authorities grant the migrants a suspension of deportation,
10:30 amounting to permission to remain in Italy temporarily for humanitarian reasons.
10:35 Current EU law won't allow them to travel to other EU countries.
10:39 That makes this a hard border for the migrants,
10:42 but the volunteers themselves are not prepared to accept that.
10:45 The problem is not Europe.
10:49 It's the Europeans who cannot comprehend that it's better to give these people something to get by on
10:57 than to put up with the ones who steal, the traffickers.
11:01 They're the ones who cause strife. The migrants have a right to come here.
11:05 Lots of EU funding goes to help breaking down the borders in the French-Italian Alps.
11:12 Exhibition director Roberto Bianco invokes human rights
11:16 and the lessons and legacy of the 20th century's wars and mass expulsions.
11:24 At one time when people saw a stranger here,
11:27 they'd open the doors to their homes to help and hide and protect them.
11:31 Through their example, these people showed how we could restore some kind of balance
11:38 after such a complicated history.
11:40 A rumor is going around among the migrants in Ventimiglia
11:44 about local people somewhere up in the mountains who know all the secret routes
11:49 and sometimes show travelers the way.
11:52 (gentle music)