A charity-run ship carrying around 230 migrants rescued at sea docked at a French port on Friday after being turned away by Italy as a battle of words over their fate intensified between the two European Union neighbors.
France warned Italy of “serious consequences” before the Ocean Viking arrived in the southern port of Toulon. The charity ship was refused entry from Rome after rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean.
That drew an angry reaction from Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, head of Italy’s most far-right government in decades, who now appears poised to push the dispute to the top of the European agenda.
“I was struck by the French government’s aggressive response, which I find incomprehensible and unjustified,” Meloni told a news conference, adding that Italy could not be the only destination for migrants from Africa.
The Ocean Viking ship had initially sought access to the Italian coast closest to where the migrants were picked up and said health and hygiene conditions on board were rapidly deteriorating.
Italy declined, saying other nations would have to shoulder more of the burden that comes with hosting the thousands of migrants trying to get to Europe from North Africa each year.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said France acted out of a “duty of humanity”, slammed Italy’s stance as “inhumane” and “incomprehensible” and said the Ocean Viking “is undoubtedly within Italy’s search and rescue zone”.
He criticized the Italian authorities for “making migrants wait 15 days at sea”.
French authorities have pledged to decide the migrants’ fate “very quickly” by examining their asylum applications within “48 hours”.
On Thursday, Darmanin said nine European nations have pledged to take in two-thirds of the migrants – including reportedly 57 children – while the remaining third remain in France.
Germany will host “more than 80,” while Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Luxembourg and Ireland will also contribute in the name of “European solidarity,” he added.
After dozens of applications to dock were turned down, the charity that operates the ship, SOS Mediterranee, turned to France for help.
France first said it would evacuate three migrants in need of urgent medical care, with a helicopter taking them and a nurse to a hospital in Corsica.
Later on Thursday, the Italian government used the same word – “unintelligible” – to describe France’s reaction to allowing a migrant ship to disembark in a French port.
Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said the request was aimed at “234 migrants, while Italy has taken in 90,000 this year alone”.
France has suspended a plan to take in 3,500 refugees currently in Italy as part of a European burden-sharing deal and has urged Germany and other EU nations to do the same.
“There will be extremely serious consequences for bilateral relations and European relations,” Darmanin warned, adding that French police will also step up controls at Italy’s border crossings.
The flare-up in tensions is reminiscent of the European migrant dispute four years ago, when notably French President Emmanuel Macron clashed with Italy’s populist Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.
Salvini, who recently returned to government as Meloni’s deputy, responded to France’s decision to halt the migrant sharing deal with the sarcastic tweet: “European solidarity”.
France had insisted that international law of the sea required Rome to take in the Ocean Viking and the 234 distressed migrants she rescued, not least after allowing access to three other rescue ships carrying around 700 people this week.
But Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said this week he was sending a signal to EU countries that they must play an even bigger role.
Rome wants “an agreement to determine, on the basis of population, how migrants with a right to asylum are resettled in different countries,” Tajani told a meeting of EU ministers next week.
In June, around a dozen EU countries, including France, agreed to accept migrants arriving in Italy and other key entry points.
So far this year, 164 asylum seekers from Italy have been brought to other countries in the bloc, which have volunteered to take them in.
However, this is only a tiny fraction of the 88,000 others who have hit its shores so far this year. About 14 percent of that number were rescued by NGO ships, according to Italian authorities.