Italy's Calabrian-descended foreign minister Antonio Tajani has been made an honorary citizen of the small seaside town of Cutro, where at least 72 people lost their lives last month in a migrant shipwreck.
Cutro's mayor conferred honorary citizenship on Tajani on Thursday when the minister attended a cabinet meeting convened there on Thursday by premier Giorgia Meloni.
Meloni ordered her ministers to Cutro following accusations that her rightwing government failed to intervene to prevent the migrant shipwreck on 26 February and amid criticism of its pledge to stop sea arrivals.
Tajani's ancestor, Diego Tajani, an anti-mafia magistrate and justice minister in the late 19th century, was born in Cutro.
