ROME — Tensions rose between Italy and its European Union partners on Monday over how to handle an influx of immigrants from North Africa, prompting the Italian interior minister to question the utility of the European Union.
At a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, European Union interior ministers said they would not recognize the temporary permits that Italy had said it planned to issue to North African immigrants who have arrived since January. The permits were intended to allow them free travel within Europe.
But Europe is divided over whether the permits would be valid in the entire visa-free Schengen area, which covers most of Western Europe, and on Monday, France and Germany rejected Italy’s plan.
“If this is the answer, it is better to be alone than in bad company,” Italy’s interior minister, Roberto Maroni, said. “I wonder if it makes sense to stay in the European Union.”
Mr. Maroni, who is a member of the Northern League, a party known for its strong anti-immigrant stance, has been vociferously critical of the European Union, accusing it of “abandoning” Italy. But it would be highly unlikely for Italy to act on any such threat to leave the union.
On Monday, Mr. Maroni called the European Union “an institution that acted immediately to save banks and declare war, but when it comes to give solidarity to a country in difficulty like Italy, it is nowhere to be found.”
Italy had been calling on its fellow European Union members to help share the burden of receiving the more than 22,000 immigrants who have arrived in Italy since January, the majority of them “economic migrants” from Tunisia seeking work in France and elsewhere in Europe.
On Monday, the French interior minister, Claude Guéant, said that France would step up controls along its border with Italy to prevent immigrants from entering unless they could prove they were economically self-sufficient. Last week, Mr. Guéant said France would help Italy patrol the Tunisian coast.
Germany has said it would take in 100 refugees who arrived recently in Malta from North Africa, but it has been reluctant to accept economic migrants seeking work and has said that Italy should handle the influx on its own.
“Italy must live up to its responsibilities,” Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich of Germany said in a television interview on Monday. He said that “Italy is a large country” and that the number of immigrants was not so great.
“Last year, Germany took in more than 40,000 asylum seekers, so the ball is in Italy’s court,” Mr. Friedrich said, adding that “Italy must negotiate with Tunisia.”
Mr. Maroni traveled to Tunisia last week to urge it to honor its immigration and repatriation accords, but that country’s government is still in disarray since the ouster in January of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali.
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