(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 25 - A humanitarian vessel carrying 234 migrants, including 57 children, hovered for nearly three weeks in international waters. Eventually, the Ocean Viking, a ship sailing under the Norwegian flag and operated by French NGO SOS Méditerranée, was redirected to Toulon in France after Rome refused access to Italian ports. The incident caused a diplomatic spat between Italy and France.
"We have to keep in mind that a clear majority of the people arriving via this central Mediterranean route today do not need international protection," said Ylva Johansson, EU Commissioner for Home Affairs. Many of these migrants mainly came from Egypt, Tunisia and Bangladesh and wanted to find a paying job in the EU, she added.
The bloc has struggled for years to agree on how to share out arriving migrants and asylum seekers. Ahead of the Extraordinary Justice and Home Affairs Council of November 25, 2022, the European Commission presented an Action Plan on the Central Mediterranean, proposing a series of measures to address the ongoing challenges along the route. This action plan aims to curb illegal migration across the Mediterranean Sea and to strengthen the solidarity and responsibility of the Member States. Cooperation with countries of origin and transit is to be intensified, irregular and unsafe migration is to be discouraged, and solutions in the area of search and rescue are to be offered. The Commission announced that similar action plans will be developed for migration routes across the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Balkans.
According to Commissioner Johansson, the action plan also seeks to accelerate the implementation of the solidarity mechanism, which was agreed upon by 19 EU member states in June of this year. Under this agreement, member states are to take in 8,000 refugees rescued on beaches or off the Mediterranean coasts of the southern EU member states.
But the dispute between France and Italy has already threatened the agreement. The new right-wing government in Rome would prefer not to allow private rescue ships carrying migrants to enter Italian ports at all. In retaliation, Paris said it would no longer take in 3,500 migrants from Italy and urged other EU countries to suspend their participation in the EU's migrant relocation mechanism and adopt similar measures. The new right-wing government in Rome stated that some NGO ships were violating international law. Meanwhile, on November 18, France denied entry into the country to 123 out of the 234 migrants of the Ocean Viking. On November 25, EU interior ministers will also hold crisis talks to head off this controversy.
The issue of refugee distribution In a joint statement, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Malta criticized other member states for not doing enough to share the burden of asylum seekers. They said only a small proportion of the migrants arriving in the four countries were being relocated under the current European system. According to the commission, only 117 migrants have been redistributed under the voluntary solidarity mechanism so far. The plan calls for 8,000 resettlement pledges to be fulfilled by the end of June 2023.
Italy's interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, said that for his country the solidarity mechanism had delivered "absolutely insufficient results." He added that other states were not prepared to take on responsibility when ships with nearly 1,000 rescued migrants on board waited for days off the Italian coast for a port to be assigned. He cautiously welcomed the EU plan and stressed the importance of reviving the migrant distribution plan agreed upon in June.
European Commission spokeswoman Anitta Hipper stated that there was a "clear, unequivocal obligation" to rescue people in danger at sea and no difference should be made between NGO ships and other vessels.
For Spain, the European Mediterranean countries have already demonstrated their flexibility when it comes to the implementation of effective procedures to help tackle irregular migration, improve returns and ensure better asylum system support. With regard to the voluntary solidarity mechanism, Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said that the system should be predictable, so that each country would be able to anticipate the obligations it had to meet. According to Spain, the only way to effectively manage migration flows in the long run is close cooperation between the countries of origin, transit and destination.
Germany and Belgium record high numbers of arrivals German Ambassador to Rome Viktor Elbling commented in a Tweet on November 11: "Italy does a lot in terms of migration but it is not alone: 154,385 asylum seekers in Germany in the period Jan-Sep 2022, 110,055 in France, 48,935 in Italy. They are respectively 0.186 percent of the German population, 0.163 percent of the French population and 0.083 percent of the Italian population."
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