Migrants: We cannot wait for next shipwreck says Meloni

(ANSA) - ROME, MAR 21 - Premier Giorgia Meloni said Tuesday that European action was needed to stop the arrival of migrants and avert the danger of another shipwreck like the February 26 one off the Calabrian town of Cutrio in which at least 87 people died as she reported to the Senate ahead of this week's EU summit.
    "After the Cutro disaster, I wrote to the president of the European Commission, the president of the European Council and to the European Council to reiterate that we cannot wait any longer," Meloni said.
    "We cannot wait defencelessly for the next shipwreck, a danger which, I insist, is caused by crossings organized by unscrupulous human traffickers.
    "Italy's borders are Europe's borders".
    She said the approach should be to find ways to stop migrants and refugees being forced to try to reach Europe in the first place.
    "Before the the hypothetical right to emigrate, every human must have the right not to be forced to migrate to seek a better life," she said.
    "This is precisely the aspect that Europe and the West have culpably neglected in recent years".
    She recalled that the Italian government had successfully got the issue of migration at the top of the agenda of the extraordinary European Council summit held last month.
    "We are faced with an emergency that is becoming structural," she said.
    She also commented on the activities of NGO-run migrant-rescue ships operating in the Mediterranean, saying countries whose flags those ships fly should be involved in managing the people rescued, not just Italy, which is usually the State the vessels request assign them a port of safety because of its geographic position. (ANSA).