Ship carrying 230 asylum seekers docks in France after Italy refuses entry

Read More

A charity-operated ship carrying hundreds of asylum seekers who were rescued at sea in the central Mediterranean has docked in the French military port of Toulon after almost three weeks stuck offshore, during which Italy’s far-right government failed to give it safe port.

The French government agreed on Thursday to take the boat in, calling it an “exceptional” move and promising to retaliate against Italy for not respecting international law to give port to the boat in Italian waters.

In a deepening row over migration, Paris said Rome was irresponsible and inhumane in not coming to the aid of the boat.

The Ocean Viking, operated by the European NGO SOS M?diterran?e, had picked up the migrants at sea near the Libyan coast before spending weeks seeking a port to accept them.

On Friday morning, the boat’s 230 passengers, including 57 children, arrived at France’s Mediterranean port of Toulon, after they had faced deteriorating conditions on board. Four passengers facing serious health difficulties had been previously airlifted from the boat by helicopter on Thursday and transferred to a French hospital.

The boat’s passengers were expected to be given medical aid and interviewed at an administrative centre at Toulon’s naval port. Those eligible to make asylum claims could then be moved to other European countries, nine of which – including Germany, Luxembourg, Bulgaria and Portugal – have offered to take in a total of two thirds of the passengers in “solidarity”. Those who France decided were not eligible to make an asylum claim would be returned to their countries of origin, the French interior minister, G?rald Darmanin, said.

France had never before allowed a rescue vessel carrying migrants to land on its coast, but said it did so this time because Italy had refused access.

Darmanin said the asylum seekers were Italy’s responsibility under EU rules, and that the French move to allow the ship to dock was an exceptional measure taken for humane reasons because of the serious situation of the many sick people onboard. He said they were saved at sea when they had been “a few hours from death”.

Darmanin said the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had for days tried to convince the Italian authorities to accept international law that a boat in distress could go to the nearest port.

Asked about the comment of the French far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, that France was being “dramatically” soft on immigration by allowing the boat to dock, Darmanin said: “What does Marine Le Pen want? To let children die on that ship a few metres from our ports?”

He said Italy’s refusal to accept the migrants was incomprehensible and that there would be “severe consequences” for Italy’s bilateral relations with France and with the EU as a whole. He said the Italian authorities had been unprofessional to allow the boat to wait at sea for 20 days without a decision on whether it could dock.

The standoff over the boat marks a rift in Paris’s relations with Italy’s new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, the leader of Brothers of Italy, a party with neofascist roots.

Meloni hit back at France on Friday, telling a news conference that she was “struck by the aggressive reaction from the French government, which from my point of view is incomprehensible and unjustified”.

As a consequence of the row, France has already decided to freeze a plan to take 3,500 asylum seekers currently in Italy, part of a European burden-sharing accord.