Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi had
talks on Friday with Interior Minister Marco Minniti to discuss
migrants and local housing emergency.
The meeting comes after a police operation to evict hundreds
of Eritrean refugees and asylum seekers from a building near
Termini Station where they had been squatting in for years
caused alarm.
The migrants clashed with police when they were cleared out
of a nearby square, where they had camped for four days.
Aid agencies and leftwing politicians said the migrants
should not have been evicted, and subsequently moved on, without
alternative lodging being provided.
Minniti and Raggi held talks in a "fully constructive
atmosphere," a joint statement said.
The pair agreed on "the importance of inter-institutional
cooperation, like that taking place with the regional
government, to address the issue of the housing emergency,
migration and reception policies, setting respect for the law
and humanity as priorities" the statement said.
The evicted migrants reportedly refused lodgings outside Rome
because it would have meant moving their children out of schools
and being split up.
Authorities have said they will make properties seized from
the mafia available to evicted squatters.
Italians on housing lists for years regularly claim migrants
are being jumped past them.
A group of right to housing protestors staged a sit-in near
to where Friday's meeting was taking place.
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