Giorgia Meloni’s Italian government has approved a series of tougher new measures against NGOs helping migrants at sea, with penalties ranging from a fine to ship confiscation.
A decree approved by the Council of Ministers late Wednesday night, a copy of which Portal was able to see, requires ships to promptly request a port of disembarkation to which they must head “immediately” after a rescue operation, rather than staying at sea to pick up the occupants of others Rescuing boats in danger, as is currently the case.
Rescue operations by NGOs operating in the Mediterranean typically last several days, with ships conducting multiple rescue operations and often welcoming hundreds of people on board. The new decree adopted by the Italian authorities also obliges the crew of rescue ships to inform the migrants they take on board of their possibility to apply for international protection in any country of the European Union and not only in the country of disembarkation. Captains who violate these rules are subject to fines of up to €50,000 under this regulation, and repeated violations can be punished with the ship being decommissioned.
Strict policy towards sea rescue NGOs
Since her appointment to head Italy’s council in October, the leader of the far-right Fratelli d’Italia party, Giorgia Meloni, and her government have pursued a tough policy against NGOs that rescue migrants at sea, accused of bed-making by smugglers and human traffickers or to encourage migrants to attempt the crossing, which the associations deny. Riccardo Gatti, head of the search and rescue team aboard the Geo Barents, a ship chartered by Doctors Without Borders (MSF), ruled in an interview published by La Repubblica on Thursday that the decree is part of a strategy that “increases the risk of death for thousands of people.” In the eyes of this official, these new rules, which aim to prevent multiple rescues, violate international law and are also “ethically unacceptable”.
diplomatic crisis
The issue of migration policy is the subject of recurring debates within the European Union (EU), with countries at the forefront – such as Italy, Spain or even Greece – regularly asking the 27 for more solidarity. The issue, which had already sparked a diplomatic crisis between France and Italy in 2018 when Matteo Salvini, leader of La Ligue (far-right) was interior minister, was the subject of a gun battle between Paris and Rome again last month, when the Italian government refused to accept the Ocean Viking, the ship of the NGO SOS Méditerranée, which ended up docking in the port of Toulon.