Elon Musk joins Italy PM at festival, says 'make more Italians' to counter migration

Tech billionaire Elon Musk joined Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at a festival in Rome on Saturday where he urged during a discussion on mass migration in Europe to "make more Italians to save Italy's culture." 

"I really want to emphasize that it’s important to have children and to create the new generation. And as simple as it sounds, if people do not have children, there is no new generation," Musk said during the annual political festival Atreju, organized by Meloni's Brothers of Italy political party, after carrying his young son onto the stage. "I’m very much in favor of humanity expanding and creating a bright and exciting future for the world. But fundamental to the furtherance of human civilization, is having humans. As simple and basic as that sounds. Every year, I look at the birth rates, and it’s kind of a bit depressing because birth rates seem to decline every year." 

Encouraging leaders to create incentives to make it easier for women to have children and support those children, Musk stressed, "If there is not at least a birth rate keeping the population constant, then people will disappear." 

When asked by the moderator to respond to the argument that migration from the southern border in the United States or from northern Africa and the Middle East in Europe could supplement declining populations in industrialized, urbanized Western societies, Musk also noted population declining in China and Japan, as examples. 

"One can’t depend on other countries for immigration, and in fact, if you look at say the population worldwide, it’s almost everywhere in the world, and it seems to be a function of almost how – once a country industrializes, once a country urbanizes, the population conveniently starts to decline," Musk said. "We don’t want Japan to disappear, we don’t want Italy as a culture to disappear, we don’t want France’s culture to disappear, I think we have to maintain a sort of reasonable cultural identity of various countries or we simply will not be those countries." 

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"Italy is the people of Italy," he added, garnering applause. 

Also at the festival were British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who met with Meloni earlier in the day for talks about curbing the flow of mass migration into Europe. 

"Agreeing on the need to tackle illegal migration to Europe in an increasingly structured way, the leaders decided to further intensify cooperation between the three Countries in combating human traffickers," Meloni's office said in a statement. "At the same time, the leaders reiterated the importance of achieving definitive stabilization of the Western Balkans, based also on the recent progress made in the European Union enlargement process in the region." 

In his speech at the festival, Sunak said if the migration crisis "requires us to update our laws and lead an international conversation to amend the post-war frameworks around asylum, then we must do that," according to The Associated Press. The British prime minister also warned that failing to address irregular migration into Europe will result in "destroying the public’s faith" in politicians and governments.

"If we do not tackle this problem, the numbers will only grow," he said, according to the AP. "It will overwhelm our countries and our capacity to help those who actually need our help the most."

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Meloni and Sunak agreed Saturday to co-finance a first of its kind Italy-United Kingdom project to facilitate assisted, voluntary repatriations to countries of origin, organized by the IOM (International Organization for Migration) for migrants stranded in Tunisia, according to another statement from Meloni’s office. 

Through their meeting at Palazzo Chigi, Meloni and Sunak also "focused on the joint work on migration as part of the Memorandum of Understanding signed in London" on April 27, her office said.

The governments of Meloni and Rama recently struck a contentious agreement that could possibly result in some migrants rescued at sea by the Italian navy, coast guard or police vessels being sent to Albania for processing, though the deal has been stalled as Albania’s constitutional court weighs challenges to the plan. The remarks also come amid heightened tensions across Europe following the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, and France particularly has been on its highest security alert since October amid a series of deadly attacks against French teachers by suspected Islamic extremists in recent years.

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"I believe that there is a problem of compatibility between Islamic culture and the values ​​and rights of our civilization," Meloni told reporters on camera Saturday, according to video shared by Radio Genoa. "The Islamic cultural centers in Italy are financed by Saudi Arabia, where Sharia is in force. In Europe there is a very Islamization process distant from the values ​​of our civilization."