EU crisis meeting: France remains tough on refugee dispute France and Ireland see an opportunity for a Northern Ireland solution

In the European dispute over the reception of boat people, France maintains its hard line towards the new right-wing government in Rome. After an EU crisis meeting in Brussels on Friday evening, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin confirmed that his country will only take in refugees from Italy again if Italy no longer ensures that rescue ships from aid organizations go to France. “We need to get out of a situation where the same states are being called upon to take on ships and carry out resettlement from other member states,” said Darmanin.

The Frenchman alluded to the fact that Italy had recently denied access to a port to the “Ocean Viking” rescue ship, after which it had to leave for France with more than 200 migrants on board. The government in Paris was outraged and pointed out that rescue ships actually have the right to go to the nearest port.

Italy, on the other hand, denounces the lack of solidarity in other EU countries when it comes to hosting refugees and calls for more support. In addition, the crews of rescue ships are accused of promoting the trade of smuggling gangs with their deployment in the Mediterranean. Most recently, these brought people from Tunisia, Egypt and Bangladesh on the life-threatening journey to the EU.

The current Czech EU Council presidency judged the crisis meeting in Brussels a success, despite the differences of opinion between the EU countries. Interior Minister Vit Rakusan said a new action plan from the European Commission was welcomed. In particular, it aims to step up cooperation with countries of origin and transit and launch a new program against people smuggling in North Africa. There could therefore be a special framework and guidelines from the International Maritime Organization for the deployment of private sea rescue vessels, which repeatedly bring hundreds of migrants to European ports.

In addition, better use should be made of the solidarity mechanism voluntarily supported by around 20 EU countries. It was launched in June to support countries where large numbers of boat people arrive. Germany had agreed to take in 3,500 asylum seekers within a year through the solidarity mechanism. However, so far the new process is quite slow.

More than 94,000 migrants have arrived in Italy since the beginning of the year, according to the Interior Ministry in Rome. Compared to the same period last year, the number increased by about 53 percent. The responsible EU Commissioner, Ylva Johansson, recently described the situation as unsustainable and pointed out that very few people who arrive leave their home countries due to political persecution. “We must bear in mind that a clear majority of people arriving today via this Central Mediterranean route do not need international protection,” Johansson said. Many of these people mainly wanted to earn money in the EU.

State Secretary Bernd Krösser represented Germany at the meeting in Brussels. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) said in the Bundestag on Thursday that Germany currently has “no major migration crisis”.

The federal government in Brussels has repeatedly pointed out in the past that, as a rule, significantly more asylum applications are submitted each month in Germany than in Italy. On Friday in August, almost 17,000 applicants were registered in Germany and only about 6,000 in Italy, according to the EU statistics agency Eurostat.

Concrete political decisions on how to deal with the new increase in migration are not expected before the next regular meeting of interior ministers on 8 December. By then, the European Commission also wants to present an action plan on the increasing number of people coming to the EU via the countries of the Western Balkans. (saw/sda/dpa)