Macron, Meloni meet in Rome in backdrop of tense relations over migration

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron in Rome, against a backdrop of tensions between the two countries over migration.

The French leader was in the Italian capital on Tuesday to attend the state funeral of former president Giorgio Napolitano, who died on Friday aged 98.

A sharp rise in asylum seekers landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa earlier this month reignited a bitter debate across the EU over who takes responsibility for asylum seekers.

There has been particularly heated rhetoric in France, where political parties in the country's hung parliament are wrangling over a draft law governing new arrivals.

"We cannot leave the Italians alone," Macron said in a television interview on Sunday –– an offer of help that Meloni immediately said she "welcomed with great interest".

The two leaders last met in Paris in June, and are also both due at a summit of Mediterranean leaders in Malta on Friday.

Italy, Germany clash

Meloni has also clashed over migration with Germany, whose president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, was also among those at Napolitano's funeral.

The Italian premier wrote to Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the weekend to complain about Berlin's funding of charity projects to help refugees either at sea or onshore in Italy.

Rome blames the NGO boats that conduct rescue missions in the central Mediterranean –– the world's deadliest sea crossing for asylum seekers –– for encouraging arrivals from North Africa.

But data shows they do not work as a so-called pull factor, departures are based on the weather not the presence of NGO boats, and the vast majority of irregular refugees are rescued by the Italian coastguard, according to the interior ministry.