Italy gets tough on migrant sea rescue missions

Italy is seeking commitments from European Union countries that they will take in migrants rescued in the Mediterranean.  Salvini’s new right-wing government has already closed its ports to humanitarian ships that rescue migrants from Mediterranean waters.

Although the number of people embarking from Libya or reaching Italy has dropped drastically over the last few years, the new Italian government has launched a major crackdown on migration since taking office on 1 June.

When the Irish patrol ship Samuel Beckett arrived in Sicily on 7 July, with 106 migrants rescued off Libya, Salvini made an announcement on Facebook saying his country would demand that EU countries show more commitment towards sharing migrants who disembark in Italy.

“Unfortunately, Italian governments over the past five years have signed agreements (in exchange for what?) so that all these ships disembark immigrants in Italy,” Salvini wrote.

“With our government, the music has changed and will change,” he said, according to a report from Deutsche Welle.  

In June, Danilo Toninelli, Italy’s transport minister, asked the EU border agency, Frontex, which runs anti-trafficking operations, to stop working in the Mediterranean.  

Toninelli said his country would look at the terms of Operation Sophia, the EU naval operation aimed at combatting people smuggling and preventing loss of life in the Mediterranean.  

Toninelli tweeted: “We respect the rules, but now they will be changed… migration can’t just be an Italian problem or else the EU is at risk.”

At a July EU meeting to discuss irregular migration, the interior ministers of Italy, Austria and Germany vowed to get tough on Europe’s external border controls and set up centres outside the continent to limit migrant numbers.

Responding to demands from Germany and Austria to accept migrants who were first registered in Italy, Salvini said his country will not take back a single migrant without stronger external border controls.

“If arrivals in Europe are reduced there will be no problem at the internal borders of the EU and we can continue to work peacefully among peoples as we intend to do,” Salvini said, according to the Financial Times.

During a press briefing after the meeting, EU migration commissioner Dmitris Avramopoulos said the EU will “set up a standing corps of 10,000 European Border guards by 2020.”

“The return of those having no right to stay in the EU must be significantly stepped up. I intend to propose some important improvements to our return rules to increase the coherence and effectiveness of our policy in this area,” Avramopoulos added.

“I will also propose to give the European Border and Coast Guard an even stronger mandate to carry out returns,” he said.

TMP – 17/08/2018