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EUROPE-MIGRANTS-ITALY WRAP
Italy doubles down on anti-migrant stance ahead of EU summit
ROME, June 23, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Italy doubled down Friday on its new tough
stance against migrants, insisting it could not take “one more” refugee and
warned the migration crisis could put the bloc’s survival at stake.
Just two days before a mini summit on the issue in Brussels, Italy’s
three-week-old populist government dug its heels in on campaign promises to
stop the influx of migrants, threatening to seize rescue ships or barring
them from its ports.
“We cannot take in one more person,” hardline Interior Minister Matteo
Salvini told the German weekly Der Spiegel. “On the contrary: we want to send
away a few.”
The far-right Salvini, who heads the anti-immigration League party and is
also Italy’s deputy prime minister, has come to personify Rome’s new
confrontational and unbending stance.
It was he who barred the French NGO-run Aquarius rescue ship, carrying
some 630 migrants, from docking in Italy earlier this month, triggering an
EU-wide row.
On Thursday, he turned his sights to the German NGO, Mission Lifeline.
“The illegal boat Lifeline is now in Maltese waters with its cargo of 239
migrants. For the safety of its crew and the passengers, we’ve asked Malta to
open its ports,” Salvini wrote on Twitter.
“Clearly, the boat should immediately be impounded and its crew arrested,”
he added.
But a source close to the Maltese government quoted by the Times of Malta
newspaper said later Friday that Malta was “neither the coordinating
authority nor one competent to carry out rescues”.
Salvini reacted strongly, saying: “If even one person was to get hurt on
board this boat… we will hold Malta accountable.”
He also reiterated that the boat would not be allowed to dock in an
Italian port.
MORE/AU/08:20 hrs
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– Europe’s future ‘will be decided’ –
Just two days before the informal talks on the migration issue — called
by Berlin and being attended by some 16 EU leaders — Salvini warned that
nothing less than the EU’s future survival was at stake.
“Within a year it will be decided whether there will still be a united
Europe or not,” Salvini told Der Spiegel.
Upcoming EU budget talks, as well as European Parliament elections in
2019, would each act as a litmus test for “whether the whole thing has become
meaningless”, he said.
Sunday’s talks are supposed to prepare for a full summit next week, where
all 28 EU leaders will discuss plans to overhaul the bloc’s asylum system,
which has been under severe pressure since the migration crisis exploded in
2015.
Nevertheless, German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who is facing a ferocious
political backlash for letting in well over a million asylum seekers into
Europe’s biggest economy — played down expectations that a solution could be
found quickly.
Speaking on a visit to Lebanon, Merkel said that “we know that no solution
will be reached on Thursday and Friday at the level of the 28 member
states… on the overall issue of migration”.
Instead, she said, “bilateral, trilateral and multilateral” deals must be
reached to tackle the issue.
But Salvini’s uncompromising line found an echo Friday when Czech Prime
Minister Andrej Babis said he was also ready to start turning away migrants
if Berlin and Vienna did so, as Germany’s interior minister proposed earlier
this week.
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer warned on Monday that he would
give Merkel a fortnight to find a European deal to curb new arrivals by the
June 28-29 EU summit, failing which he vowed to order border police to turn
back migrants.
– ‘Never touch Italian soil again’ –
“Italian ports are no longer at the disposal of traffickers. Open the
Maltese ports! Open the French ports,” Salvini said earlier on Friday.
And in a Facebook post on Thursday he vowed that “foreign NGO boats will
never touch Italian soil again.”
Rome had briefly weighed boycotting Sunday’s mini-summit, but finally
agreed to attend after reassurances from Merkel.
Italy had been riled because a leaked draft statement focused more on the
redistribution of the migrants once they had arrived in Europe, rather than
on securing Europe’s borders.
But the government was placated after Merkel told them the text had been
shelved.
Nevertheless, tensions continue to simmer very close to the surface, and
tempers can flare up very quickly.
On Friday, Italy took offence when French President Emmanuel Macron
likened rising nationalism and anti-migrant sentiment in Europe to “leprosy”.
“One day, he’s saying that he doesn’t want to offend Italy, and then the
next, he’s talking about leprosy,” said Italy’s other deputy prime minister
and head of the populist M5S party, Luigi Di Maio.
“We may be leper populists. But I take the lessons from those who open
their own ports. Welcome thousands of migrants and then we can talk,” said
Salvini.
BSS/AFP/AU/08:25 hrs