New Interior Minister Matteo
Piantedosi has signed a directive ordering two NGO-run
search-and-rescue ships to stay out of Italian waters after they
picked up a combined total of 326 people in the southern
Mediterranean.
The interior ministry said that the conduct of the two ships,
the Ocean Viking and Humanity 1, was "not in line with the
spirit of European and Italian regulations on security and
border control and the fight against illegal immigration".
The move was agreed on with Deputy Premier and Infrastructure
and Sustainable Mobility Minister Matteo Salvini, whose brief
gives him authority over Italy's ports.
It appears to mark a return of the policy of closing Italy's
ports to NGO-run migrant rescue ships that Salvini, adopted when
he was interior minister between 2018 and 2019 in the first
government of ex-premier Giuseppe Conte.
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