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MIGRANT CRISIS

Over 1,000 migrants brought to safety at Italian ports: coastguard

More than 1,000 migrants were brought to safety at two Italian ports after the overcrowded boats they were on encountered problems in the Mediterranean, the coastguard said Saturday.

Published: 11 March 2023 15:37 CET
Over 1,000 migrants brought to safety at Italian ports: coastguard
Italian coastguard officers standing near a body recovered after a migrant boat shipwreck February 27, 2023 near the Le Castella beach in Isola di Capo Rizzuto, south of Crotone. (Photo by Alessandro SERRANO / AFP)

The rescues came the same day as a body was discovered of the 74th victim of the deadly shipwreck nearly two weeks ago — that of a female child between five and six years of age, according to news agency AGI.

The February 26th shipwreck, which occurred just off the shore of Calabria, has drawn sharp criticism of the right-wing government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for its failure to intervene timely to save the boat.

The coastguard said Saturday it was wrapping up a large rescue operation that began Friday after three boats were spotted drifting off Italy’s coasts.

One was south of the Calabrian city of Crotone and two further south off Roccella Ionica.

Coastguard videos showed a large fishing boat pitching violently back and forth in nightime rough seas with dozens of people visible on the deck. Other images showed inflatable rescue boats approaching another fishing vessel
packed with people. Those 487 migrants onboard the first boat were safely brought to the port of Crotone at about 3:00 am Saturday morning, the coastguard said.

Another rescue operation in which 500 migrants were brought to safety aboard a coastguard ship was wrapping up, it said. News agency ANSA had earlier reported that the ship had docked at the port of Reggio Calabria.

A third boat carrying 379 people was rescued by two coastguard patrol boats and the migrants transferred to a Navy ship headed to the Sicilian port of Augusta, it said.

Italy’s defence ministry said it had begun to air transfers of migrants away from the crowded migrant centre on the island of Lampedusa, which it said was now over capacity.

The recent shipwreck has put the government on the defensive. On Thursday, Meloni held a cabinet meeting at Cutro, near the disaster site, and announced a new decree that included stiffer prison sentences for human traffickers, but no new measures to help save lives.

Her far-right Brothers of Italy party, which won elections last year, had promised to curb arrivals, but Italy has recently seen a sharp rise in the number of migrants attempting to reach its shores via the dangerous Mediterranean crossing.

The interior ministry says more than 17,500 people have arrived by sea so far this year — almost three times the number for the same period last year.

READ ALSO: Italian PM vows to crack down on traffickers at migrant shipwreck site

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MIGRANT CRISIS

Italy joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

Italy is one of 15 EU member states who have sent a joint letter to the European Commission demanding a further tightening of the bloc's asylum policy, which will make it easier to transfer undocumented migrants to third countries, such as Rwanda, including when they are rescued at sea.

Published: 17 May 2024 11:59 CEST
Italy joins countries calling for asylum centres outside EU

The countries presented their joint stance in a letter dated May 15th to the European Commission, which was made public on Thursday.

It was sent less than a month before European Parliament elections across the 27-nation European Union, in which far-right anti-immigration parties are forecast to make gains.

Italy, Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania signed the letter.

In it, they ask the European Union’s executive arm to “propose new ways and solutions to prevent irregular migration to Europe”.

They want the EU to toughen its asylum and migration pact, which introduces tighter border controls and seeks to expedite the deportation of rejected asylum-seekers.

The pact, to be operational from 2026, will speed up the vetting of people arriving without documents and establish new border detention centres.

The 15 countries also want to see mechanisms to detect and intercept migrant boats and take them “to a predetermined place of safety in a partner country outside the EU, where durable solutions for those migrants could be found”.

They said it should be easier to send asylum seekers to third countries while their requests for protection are assessed.

They cited as a model a controversial deal Italy has struck with Albania, under which thousands of asylum-seekers picked up at sea can be taken to holding camps in the non-EU Balkan country as their cases are processed.

READ ALSO: Italy approves controversial Albanian migrant deal

The European Commission said it would study the letter, though a spokeswoman, Anitta Hipper, added that “all our work and focus is set now on the implementation” of the migration and asylum pact.

Differences with UK-Rwanda model

EU law says people entering the bloc without documents can be sent to an outside country where they could have requested asylum – so long as that country is deemed safe and the applicant has a genuine link with it.

That condition differentiates it from a scheme set up by non-EU Britain under which irregular arrivals will be denied the right to request asylum in the UK and sent instead to Rwanda.

Rights groups accuse the African country – ruled with an iron fist by President Paul Kagame since the end of the 1994 genocide that killed around 800,000 people – of cracking down on free speech and political opposition.

The 15 nations said they want the EU to make deals with third countries along main migration routes, citing the example of the arrangement it made with Turkey in 2016 to take in Syrian refugees fleeing war.

Camille Le Coz, associate director of the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank, said: “In legal terms, these models pose many questions and are very costly in terms of resource mobilisation and at the operational level.”

The opening date for migrant reception centres in Albania set up under the deal with Italy had been delayed, she noted.

With the June 6th-9th EU elections leading to a new European Commission, the proposals put forward by the 15 countries would go into the inbox of the next commission for it to weigh them, she said.

She also noted that EU heavyweights France, Germany and Spain had not signed onto the letter.

“For certain member countries, the priority really is the implementation of the pact, and that in itself is already a huge task,” Le Coz said.

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