Deputy Premier and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Wednesday that the measures in his new security decree were ready to be applied to a ship run by the Sea-Watch NGO after it rescued 52 people from a rubber dinghy off the Libyan coast. The League leader said the "new instruments of the second security decree (are ready) to stop access to our territorial waters". He described the German NGO's vessel as "a pirate ship that allows some to repeatedly break the law".
Sea-Watch has on several occasions sought to challenge Salvini's policy of closing Italy's ports to NGO-run search-and-rescue ships. The government's new decree would see organizations that bring migrants rescued at sea to Italy without permission fined up to 50,000 euros. The Sea-Watch 3 ship was only released from impoundment days ago following its seizure after it brought a group of rescued migrants to Italy last month.
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