Italy’s right-wing government is facing political and diplomatic consequences for its harsh treatment of sea rescue ships and migrants rescued from the Mediterranean. France responded on Thursday with measures that Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani called “exaggerated”.
Previously, France had the OceanViking promised to be able to call at the military port of Toulon, where it was due to arrive on Friday morning. The rescue ship with 234 migrants on board, including more than 50 minors, was not allowed to land in Italy. French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin issued the OceanViking For humanitarian reasons, Toulon was granted permission on Thursday, which he described as a special exception. Three people had previously been taken from the ship to Corsica by a French military helicopter because they urgently needed hospitalization.
The migrants, some of whom have already been on the OceanViking had to endure, are therefore safe. On the other hand, relations between Paris and Rome have now reached an exceptionally low point, and the EU in Brussels is also angry about Italy’s actions.
France is suspending an agreement to take in 3,500 migrants
France’s Interior Minister Darmanin found harsh words. He condemned as unacceptable the behavior of the government in Rome led by Giorgia Meloni, head of the post-fascist Fratelli d’Italia. Italy has violated international rules that apply to the admission of boat people and those rescued from distress at sea and has not complied with agreements with EU partners and violated international law. The spokesman for the French government had criticized Italy’s actions just as sharply the day before. And Paris does not stop at clear words.
On Thursday, it suspended an agreement with Italy that stipulated that France would take over 3,500 migrants from the neighboring country by next summer. In addition, Interior Minister Darmanin called on the other EU countries to freeze similar agreements reached at a solidarity summit with Italy on the distribution of migrants. Paris also recalled that EU-Mediterranean countries Italy, Spain, France and Greece eventually received Community financial aid for their particular burdens as states with maritime and EU external borders.
Another step taken by France is likely to have a more immediate effect: it announced that it would significantly strengthen the protection of its borders with Italy. This should particularly affect the border near Menton. In this stretch of the Riviera, thousands of mainly African migrants try to get to France illegally from the Italian side every year. This has led to a de facto controlled border in the middle of the EU. French border guards send all the migrants they pick back towards Ventimiglia, there are said to be around 80 a day.
In any case, the situation at this border keeps creating discord between Paris and Rome: France accuses the Italians of doing too little against illegal border crossings because it wants to get rid of migrants. Italy counters that the French systematically reject migrants without checking their status.
The message from France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin to the Italian government is clear.
(Photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP)
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi on Thursday evening called France’s reactions “completely incomprehensible” to the request that France should take in 234 migrants “while Italy has taken in 90,000 just this year”. Piantedosi did not mention that Germany and France are taking in significantly more refugees than Italy. The interior minister complained that they wanted to force Italy to serve as the EU’s only point of contact for illegal migrants.
Piantedosi, who is non-partisan but close to the Lega, is primarily responsible for the decree on the basis of which the Italian government wants to keep rescue ships run by private organizations (NGOs) away from its ports and prevent them from bringing migrants rescued from distress at sea into the country. According to the right-wing coalition, the flag states of the NGO ships should take over the migrants.
“Humanity, but with determination”: Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, here in the studio for a TV program on the subject of migrant ships.
(Photo: Giuseppe Lami/imago)
Except for the ones on the OceanViking got the decree just the migrants on the GeoBarents from Doctors Without Borders and on the humanity 1 felt by SOS Humanity. With 572 or 180 migrants on board, they had to wait a good two weeks at sea before they were allowed to dock in Catania. There, the Italian government only allowed women, minors and the sick to go ashore. The ships were to leave the territorial waters with the rest of the rescued. Interior Minister Piantedosi defined this as a line of “humanity but with determination”.
Trying to score with the hard line didn’t work well
After two days, however, the health authorities intervened and decided on Tuesday evening that all migrants should be allowed to go ashore. Above all, the mental state of those who had to remain on the ships was described as extremely critical by NGO employees.
With toughness against migrants and especially NGOs, the new right-wing government in Rome wants to score points domestically and in all probability also put pressure on other EU countries to take more migrants from them. First of all, damage has been done in terms of foreign policy, and it seems that the Italians are not overly enthusiastic either: in a poll published on Thursday, 56 percent of those polled said the latest actions were useless.
Foreign Minister Tajani announced that he intends to present the issue of illegal migration across the Mediterranean to his colleagues at the ministerial meeting in Brussels on Monday.