It is finally in Toulon where the Ocean Viking will disembark this Friday and its 234 migrants are still on board, trapped at sea for nineteen days. It is “a duty of humanity,” said Gérald Darmanin on Thursday.
“It is of an exceptional nature that we welcome this ship, given the fifteen days of waiting at sea to which the Italian authorities have subjected passengers,” said the Minister of the Interior.
Four years after the Aquarius crisis, the fate of the immigrants on the Ocean Viking, an SOS Méditerranée ship, has once again inflamed relations between Paris and Rome.
An “unacceptable” attitude
Despite the refusal, at first, of the Italian authorities, three other ships have recently been able to dock on the Italian coast. However, none of Ocean Viking’s 43 requests for safe harbor access received a positive response. Faced with a dead end, SOS Méditerranée turned to France.
Gérald Darmanin then criticized Italy’s “unacceptable attitude” and contrary to “international law”. This Thursday, four of the 234 migrants on the ship, including three for medical reasons and one companion, were evacuated by helicopter to Corsica.
Through the voice of the Minister of the Interior, France has finally designated Toulon as a reception port for all migrants still on board the humanitarian ship.
“Italy is the big loser”
“Italy is the big loser of these behaviors. It is putting itself outside its European solidarity and its own commitments. There will be very strong consequences in the bilateral and European relationship”, said Gérald Darmanin.
In retaliation, the government has decided to suspend “with immediate effect” the planned reception of 3,500 immigrants who are currently in Italy this summer and has asked “especially Germany” to do the same.
“Now we must be able to organize things differently so that Italy cannot benefit from European solidarity and be selfish when refugees, especially children, show up” at its ports, Gérald Darmanin said. .
Italy considers the French reaction “totally incomprehensible”
“France’s reaction to the request to take in 234 immigrants, when Italy only took in 90,000 this year, is totally incomprehensible,” Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi responded hours later.
“The nervousness of certain French politicians in the face of the arrival of 234 immigrants by boat is inexplicable,” Matteo Salvini, who held the same position between 2018 and 2019, abounded in the same direction. “France only accepted 38 landings.”
“Italy should protest, not the others,” he added.
Italian authorities had initially accepted only women, children and sick people, a classification described by Rome as a means of putting pressure on the EU to help it more.
Matteo Piantedosi denounced the desire to “impose the principle that Italy is the only possible European destination for illegal immigrants” and that, despite affirmations of European solidarity, the peninsula “has so far faced only this problem.”
Italy on the “front line”
Italy, which has long been on the “front line” of immigrant arrivals, welcomes thousands of people each year who have embarked on the Mediterranean crossing.
He regularly criticizes the lack of European solidarity. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani made it clear on Wednesday that the current crisis was a message sent to Europe and that his government would raise the issue at an EU Council of Ministers next week.
Since June, a relocation system, which had already gone through a first phase in 2019, foresees that a dozen Member States, including France and Germany, voluntarily welcome 8,000 immigrants who have arrived in countries such as Italy, close to the Libyan coast. .
However, only 164 were relocated in 2022 from Italy to other Member States, including 117 under the mechanism adopted in June. A number considered insufficient by Italy, which states that some 88,100 people have arrived on its shores since January 1.
New far-right government
The crisis comes just three weeks after the formation of Italy’s most right-wing post-war government, dominated by Giorgia Meloni’s post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia party, de facto ending a golden age period marked by friendship between Emmanuel Macron and former Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
Georgia Meloni’s coalition notably includes Matteo Salvini’s League, a party based largely on anti-immigrant rhetoric. The current Minister of Transport, Matteo Salvini, is being prosecuted for having blocked migrants at sea in 2019 when he was Minister of the Interior.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday defended her policy of allowing only the most vulnerable migrants to disembark on humanitarian ships, saying “they don’t shipwreck.”
Source: BFM TV
