There is no solution in sight in the dispute over the admission of refugees to the EU. France remained tough on Rome at a special meeting of European interior ministers on Friday. As long as the right-wing Italian government does not open ports to rescue ships, France will not accept thousands of migrants from Italy as promised, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said in Brussels.
Darmanin accused Italy of “disregarding the law of the sea” by closing its ports to rescue ships, such as the “Ocean Viking”. This means there is “no reason” for France or Germany to take in 3,500 people from Italy as promised.
The Greek Minister of Immigration and Asylum, Notis Mitarachi, called for a mandatory refugee relocation system. “We have been talking about a European solution to the migration crisis for too long,” he said in Brussels. Now there should be “results”.
Distribution barely works
The EU has not agreed on binding entry rules since 2015. In the summer, member states had instead agreed on a voluntary “solidarity mechanism” to relieve arrival countries such as Italy and Greece. According to the EU Commission, instead of the agreed 8,000 people, only a few hundred people were redistributed.
The special meeting was mainly about migrants coming to Europe via the dangerous Mediterranean route. Since the beginning of the year, the European Commission has counted 90,000 arrivals in the EU on this route, about 50 percent more than in the previous year.
Call to “Mankind”
Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who is also responsible for immigration, called on the partners to be “human”. The EU recently took in about nine million refugees from Ukraine and is now fighting for several tens of thousands, he criticized.
Asselborn also spoke out in favor of including Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia in the Schengen area without border controls, as proposed by the European Commission. Austria, among others, is against and points to the increasing number of migrants via the Balkan route. The extension of Schengen requires unanimity.
Source: Krone
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