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Rome has proven a “lack of humanity” by rejecting a ship containing migrants, the French international minister says
There shall be penalties for Italy if it continues to show away migrants rescued from the Mediterranean Sea, French International Minister Catherine Colonna has mentioned.
The brand new authorities in Rome banned the Ocean Viking, a vessel containing 234 migrants who had been rescued at sea, from getting into Italian ports final month. Colonna described this conduct as a “sturdy disappointment” in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper revealed on Saturday. “The choice is surprising,” she added.
“Italy respects neither worldwide nor maritime legislation,” she mentioned, insisting that the ship transporting distressed folks from the Center East and North Africa needed to be accepted by the closest port, which had been an Italian one.
“Due to Italy’s cussed refusal and lack of humanity,” France needed to permit the ship to dock, the international minister famous. The Ocean Viking, operated by French group SOS Mediterranee, entered the port of Toulon in southeastern France on Friday.
A press release by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who claimed it had been the responsibility of Paris from the outset to just accept the ship, was “in whole contradiction with our exchanges,” Colonna insisted.
“There shall be penalties if Italy persists with this angle,” she warned.
Colonna additionally famous that France had already frozen its earlier plan to soak up 3,500 asylum seekers, who’re at the moment in Italy, and tightened controls on the Franco-Italian border in response to the actions by Rome.
Meloni, who got here to energy on the promise of cracking down on unlawful immigration, had earlier decried the transfer by Paris as “aggressive” and betraying the “European dynamic… of solidarity and sharing.”
The standoff is inflicting main issues in Brussels, with European Fee Vice President Margaritis Schinas saying on Saturday that the EU “cannot permit two member states [to be] preventing one another in public and creating yet one more mega political disaster over migration.”
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