The Italian government is astonished
at news that Germany is set to fund non-governmental
organisations rescuing migrants at sea and helping them in Italy
too, and demands clarification, sources at the office of Premier
Giorgia Meloni said Friday.
The sources voiced "great astonishment at the news reported by
ANSA according to which a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of
the Federal Republic of Germany has 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.
"It is hoped that the news is unfounded because the financing by
Germany of NGO activities on Italian territory would be a
serious anomaly."
The sources added that supporting the transfer of irregular
immigrants in Italy "would represent an extremely serious
anomaly in the dynamics that regulate the relations among states
at a European and international level".
They said that "this news is in any case an opportunity to
reaffirm the need to achieve clarity on the activities of NGOs
in the Mediterranean and the need to establish that migrants
transported by organizations financed by foreign States must be
received by the latter".
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, meanwhile, said that the
government knew "nothing" about German funding for NGO activity
for migrants on the way to Italy or after they are inside the
country.
The German foreign ministry spokesman told ANSA earlier on
Friday that the German government is to fund NGOs working to
support migrants and refugees arriving in Italy by sea and once
they have arrived.
"Funding of hundreds of thousands of euros for a project to
assist migrants ashore in Italy and one for an NGO that operates
rescues "at sea" is "imminent", said the spokesperson, without
specifying which organisations would receive the funding.
(SOS Humanity later told ANSA that it was the recipient of the
funding, which had begun last Monday).
The spokesperson told ANSA that the foreign ministry is
implementing a "financial support programme set up by the
Bundestag (the German parliament, ed.) that aims to "support
both civil rescue at sea and projects on land for people rescued
at sea".
"We have received several applications for funding. In two
cases, the examination of the applications has already been
completed. The disbursement of funds in these two cases is
imminent," he continued.
"These are a project for the onshore assistance in Italy of
people rescued at sea and a project of a non-governmental
organisation on sea rescue," said the spokesman, adding that
each project would receive between 400,000 and 800,000 euros.
(Government sources later said there would be total of two
million euros in funding each year until 2026).
"Rescuing people who are in distress at sea is a legal,
humanitarian and moral duty," the spokesperson continued.
"Like national coast guards, in particular the Italian Coast
Guard, civilian rescuers in the central Mediterranean also use
their ships to save people in distress at sea," concluded the
spokesperson.
Several German NGOs already operate migrant search and rescue
missions in the central Mediterranean, alongside others from
France and Italy.
Meloni's right-wing government has restricted their activities
by banning multiple sea rescues and instructing ships to
disembark rescued migrants and refugees in distant ports.
Italy is struggling to manage a 100% increase in the number of
sea arrivals in 2023, with 132,832 people having arrived so far
according to interior ministry data.
Some 1,599 migrants and refugees died or went missing in the
Central Mediterranean in the same period according to UNHCR
data.
The lay Catholic Sant'Egidio Community charity, for its part,
said it had signed a fresh deal with Berlin to fund migrant
activities in Italy, as part of a years-long relationship.
Berlin also on Friday reiterated that Italy needs to resume
taking back asylum seekers from Germany under the terms of the
Dublin Regulation if it wants Germany to resume relocations
under the European voluntary solidarity mechanism.
"Italy is not respecting readmissions under the Dublin system,
and until it does, we will not accept any more refugees" from
Italy through the solidarity mechanism, German Interior Minister
Nancy Faeser told the ZDF broadcaster.
Now Berlin is waiting for Rome to "meet us again halfway" in the
fulfillment of its "obligations", Faeser said.
The Dublin Regulation, dating to 2013, establishes that asylum
claims must be handled by the EU country of first entry unless
decided otherwise, and that this country must readmit asylum
seekers found lodging claims elsewhere.
Separately, in 2022 a voluntary solidarity mechanism was agreed
at European level for the redistribution of asylum seekers in
support of front-line countries such as Italy that receive the
vast majority of arrivals, especially by sea.
Disputes over migration risk "dissolving" the bloc, its top
diplomat said in a British newspaper interview on Friday.
The migrant issue risks dissolving the EU, the bloc's High
Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep
Borrell told the Guardian Friday.
Migration could be "a dissolving force for the European Union,"
because of the deep cultural differences between countries and
their long-term inability to reach a common migrant policy, he
said in an interview.
"Some members of the EU have a 'Japanese' style: we don't want
to mix, we don't want migrants, we don't want to accept people
from the outside. We want our purity," said Borrell, stressing
that, on the contrary, Europe needs migrants to counteract
falling demographic trends.
He went on to say that nationalism is on the rise in Europe, due
more to migration than to euroskepticism.
"We feared that Brexit would be an epidemic. But it has not been
one. It has been a vaccine. No one wants to follow the exit of
the British from the European Union.
"Migration is a bigger fracture for the European Union. And it
could be a dissolving force for the European Union."
Despite the institution of a common EU external border, Borrell
told the British daily, "we have not been able so far to agree
on a common migration policy."
He added: "if we want to survive from the productive standpoint
we need migrants".
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