Survivors wait on the deck of the rescue ship ‘Ocean Viking’ in the Mediterranean Sea near the coast of Sicily, Sunday, November 6, 2022. VINCENZO CIRCOSTA / AP
Let’s go to France? Late in the afternoon of November 8, the humanitarian ship Ocean Viking asked Paris to assign it a safe port to disembark the 234 people it had rescued in the Mediterranean Sea as they fled Libya and attempted to reach the European continent reach. Between October 22nd and 26th, the boat, operated by the NGOs SOS Méditerranée and the Red Cross, carried out six rescue operations at sea with migrants notably from Bangladesh, Eritrea, Syria, Egypt and Pakistan. “Everyone is exhausted, the situation can escalate at any time,” explains Sophie Beau, co-founder of SOS Méditerranée. People are threatening to throw themselves overboard, we are at a breaking point with no result in sight. »
The ship repeatedly asked Italy to disembark. Vain. He therefore headed for France and was able to arrive off Corsica on November 10th. The Italian agency ANSA quoted an anonymous source from the French interior ministry in a cable on Tuesday afternoon, according to which the French authorities were preparing to “open the port of Marseille to the ship Ocean Viking”. When asked, Place Beauvau did not confirm this information.
On Wednesday morning, government spokesman Olivier Véran clarified the French position by urging Italy to “play its part” and “respect its European commitments” by hosting the Ocean Viking. “The boat is currently in Italian territorial waters, there are very clear European rules which, moreover, have been accepted by the Italians, who are in fact the first beneficiaries of a European financial solidarity mechanism,” recalled Mr. Véran, noting that “the The current attitude of the Italian government” was “unacceptable”.
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On Tuesday, Italy’s new executive, led by far-right council leader Giorgia Meloni, presented France’s acceptance of the boat as a given and hailed a political victory. Proof that Italy’s tough stance on NGOs had paid off and allowed him to change the French position.
“We very much appreciate France’s decision to share responsibility for the migration emergency, which has so far rested on the shoulders of Italy and some other Mediterranean countries,” the Council Presidency said in a press release on Tuesday. “We did not wait for the Meloni government to set up a European solidarity in the management of migration flows, of which Italy is the first beneficiary,” stressed Place Beauvau on Tuesday, referring to a resettlement mechanism, however poorly functional, that the Italian party consider invalid.
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