Nothing is going well between Rome and Paris. The reasons for the diplomatic discord? Hundreds of migrants remained stranded Tuesday evening off Italy on humanitarian ships, including that of the NGO SOS Mediterranean, the Ocean Viking.
The French government thus denounced Tuesday evening the “unacceptable behavior” of the Italian authorities who refuse to allow the ship Ocean Viking, which is off the coast of Sicily, to dock with 234 migrants on board. The attitude of the Italian authorities is “contrary to the law of the sea and the spirit of European solidarity”, declared a French government source. “We expect something different from a country which is today the first beneficiary of the European solidarity mechanism”.
An agreement between Meloni and Macron?
Earlier in the evening, the new Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had thanked France which, according to her, agreed to welcome the Ocean Viking in one of its ports. “We want to say how much we appreciate France’s decision to take its share of responsibility for the migratory emergency, which until now has rested on the shoulders of Italy and a few other Mediterranean countries, by opening its ports to the ship Ocean Viking,” she said in a statement. According to AGI, an Italian news agency, the matter was settled between Giorgia Meloni and Emmanuel Macron during COP27 in Egypt.
In Paris, the French Ministry of the Interior clarified that the ship is “for the moment” in “Italian waters”, “until tomorrow (Wednesday) noon at least”. Earlier in the day on Tuesday, SOS Méditerranée had asked France to assign a safe port for the disembarkation of the 234 migrants, stranded on board the boat for 18 days. “We are in a total impasse in the face of Italy’s silence”, notably regretted the director of the NGO, Sophie Beau.