The whole European Union must
do more to help Italy cope with a huge migrant influx, the
European Commission said Tuesday after Interior Minister
Angelino Alfano's recent call for border agency Frontex to
intervene and supersede Italy's 20-month Mare Nostrum
search-and-rescue operation.
An EC spokesman stressed, however, that Frontex was "a
small agency" with limited resources and therefore new measures
from all 28 member States were needed.
"We're in touch with Italy and we cannot fail to agree on
the fact that the EU as a whole must do more," the spokesman
said.
"We have repeated continuously that the member States must
do more, contributing with means and funding," he added.
"We are doing all we can to help Italy and fully recognise
what a magnificent job it has done," he said, while noting that
Rome had received "unprecedented" aid in the last seven years.
This amounted to 500 million euros between 2017 and 2013
and would total 315 million between 2014 and 2020 due to overall
budgets cuts, he said.
Frontex, he said had a "small budget" and was lacking
border guards, ships and planes, so badly needed a boost from
the EU's 28 members.
Alfano said last week that Mare Nostrum, launched after a
migrant-boat disaster killed 366 last October, would soon have
to be wound up.
Critics of the take-all-comers policy have said it has
spurred an increase in the activities of people smugglers while
others have stressed the desperate migrants would have left
North Africa anyway.
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