Two search and rescue boats operated by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), with 118 migrants on board saved in the Mediterranean, could be the first rehearsal of the migration policy of the new Italian government, led by Giorgia Meloni.
The Ocean Viking, which flies the Norwegian flag and is operated by the German NGO SOS Mediterráneo, has 73 people on board.
Humanity One, which flies the German flag and is run by another German NGO, SOS Humanity, transports 45 migrants.
In both cases, the people were rescued in international waters in the search and rescue zone of Malta.
As interior minister in the first government of former prime minister Giuseppe Conte, between 2018 and 2019, Matteo Salvini took a tough stance, closing Italian ports to NGO-run migrant rescue boats.
His new position, as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, gives him a voice in the management of Italian ports where these NGOs often request to dock and disembark the people they rescue.
Since the beginning of the year, 1,735 migrants have disappeared in the Mediterranean, including 1,269 in the central Mediterranean, the world’s most dangerous migration route, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The UN agency estimated the number of dead and missing in 2021 at 2,062 in the Mediterranean, including 1,567 in the central Mediterranean alone.
According to AFP, every year thousands of people fleeing conflict or poverty try to reach Europe by crossing the Mediterranean from Libya, whose coast is some 300 kilometers from Italy.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the first woman in office, took office on Sunday, calling on her government to “stay together.”
“We have to be united, there are emergencies that the country has to face. We have to work together,” Meloni said at the end of the first council of ministers, which lasted about 30 minutes, with underlying tensions with Silvio Berlusconi and Matteo Salvini, who form part of the coalition in Italy.
On Sunday morning, Meloni received from the hands of Mario Draghi, the outgoing Prime Minister and much appreciated on the international scene, the bell used by the President of the Council to regulate the debates in the Council of Ministers, after a meeting of more than one hour at the Chigi Palace. , seat of government in Rome.
She was congratulated by the leaders of the three main institutions of the European Union: Úrsula Von der Leyen, Charles Michel for the European Council and Roberta Metsola for the European Parliament, Meloni responding to all by saying that she was “prepared and eager to work together”.
Source: TSF
