Saving migrants from drowning is a
legal, humanitarian and moral duty, a spokesman for the German
Foreign Ministry told ANSA on Sunday after Defence Minister
Guido Crosetto described as "very serious" the fact that the
German government funds NGOs performing search and rescue in the
Central Mediterranean.
"Saving people who drown and find themselves in distress at sea
is a legal, humanitarian and moral duty," the spokesperson said.
"Like the national coastguard organisation, particularly the
Italian one, the
civil rescuers in the central Mediterranean use their boats to
perform rescue operations, saving people in distress at sea," he
added.
On Friday sources at the office of Premier Giorgia Meloni voiced
"great astonishment at the news reported by ANSA according to
which a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry had announced
imminent funding to NGOs for a project to assist migrants on
Italian territory and a project of 'rescues' at sea". "The
Italian government will immediately contact the German
authorities for clarification," the sources said.
It later emerged that the NGO to receive the funding is SOS
Humanity, which operates rescue vessels in the central
Mediterranean.
The NGO itself said it had been allocated 790,000 euros.
Separately, the lay Catholic Sant'Egidio Community charity said
on Friday had signed a fresh deal with Berlin to fund migrant
activities in Italy, as part of a years-long relationship.
"The (German) Federal Government is working hard to reform the
Common European Asylum System in order to create a sustainable
and, above all, solidarity-based system for migration and asylum
in the European Union - also as a basic condition for a
functioning Schengen system and for the opening of internal
borders," continued the foreign ministry spokesman, reiterating
what had already been stated on Friday.
"The foreign ministry is currently implementing a financial
support programme set up by the German Bundestag. The aim is to
support both civil rescue at sea and projects on land for people
rescued at sea," he added.
In an interview to La Stampa published on Sunday Crosetto said
that "Berlin pretends not to realise that, in doing so (funding
the NGO, ed.), it creates a problem for a country that is in
theory 'friendly'".
"Faced with our request for help, is this their response? We did
not behave in the same way when Angela Merkel convinced the EU
to invest billions of euros in Turkey to stop migrants arriving
in Germany from the Middle East," added the minister.
Crosetto denied, however, that there is a "European plot"
against the Italian government.
"It is the ideological approach of a certain political left that
does not take into account the consequences of its theories on
the people," he said.
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