EU migrant rescue missions need to
be rethought, particularly on automatically taking those saved
to Italy, sources said after a government summit ahead of the
Innsbruck summit on Wednesday with Germany and Austria.
Other points agreed were: a No to secondary movements; an
insistence on strengthening external borders; a serious EU
relocation policy for asylum seekers; and support for Libya.
Italy will go to the summit with a common line and Rome will
return to being a protagonist in Europe, the sources stressed.
Interior Minister and Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini will have
another summit meeting on migrants Wednesday with Premier
Giuseppe Conte, sources said Monday after a summit ahead of
Wednesday's summit in Innsbruck.
Monday's government summit also featured Labour and Industry
Minister and Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio and Economy Minister
Giovanni Tria.
Di Maio and Salvini are the leaders of the two government
partners, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and the
anti-migrant, Euroskeptic League.
Salvini is aiming to draft a joint government document for
Innsbruck, government sources said, with the aim of supplying
aid to Libya, protecting Italy's external borders and revising
the rules for foreign missions.
Foreign Minister Enrico Moavero Milanesi said on the prospect
of revising the EU's migrant rescue mission Sophia that "we
won't duck our international commitments, we are fully involved
(in Sophia) and we don't intend to move outside the framework of
international law, and therefore European law".
Moavero Milanesi said at a press conference with UN special
envoy for Libya Ghassan Salamé that "our government has decided
to give more boats to Libya to save people. The idea is not only
to block but also to save people and to take them to a safe port
as soon as possible".
Moavero Milanesi was speaking after the European Commission
said Sophia's remit would be strategically revised soon.
He also spoke after Interior Minister Salvini said Italy
would close its ports to European navy ships, as it has done
with NGO ships.
Only the mandate of the Themis mission, unlike that of the
the EunavForMed Sophia mission, does not envisage all the EU
ships involved necessarily offloading their rescued migrants in
Italy, EU sources said Monday.
The Themis mandate envisages the Marine Rescue Coordination
Centre (MRCC) deciding what is the safe European port to offload
migrants, and this is not necessarily envisaged in the MRCC's
home country, the sources said.
For Operation Sophia, on the other hand, the Triton
operational plan is still being applied, which envisages all
landings in Italy".
European Commission migration spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud
said Monday the EC would shortly discuss Interior Minister
Salvini's demand to close Italian ports to ships taking part in
international missions that rescue migrants.
"A revision of the strategic mandate" of Operation Sophia "is
imminent", she said.
"Therefore that will be the occasion to discuss Italian
proposals," she said.
Salvini has called for the closure of Italian ports to EU
EUNAVFOR Med mission ships but the Italian defence ministry has
said he is not competent to do so.
Labour and Industry Minister and Deputy Premier Luigi Di Maio
on Monday called for new rules of engagement for the European
Union's EUNAVFOR Med mission in the Mediterranean.
He was commenting after the differences over migrant rescues
emerged on Sunday between Salvini and the defence ministry.
Salvini, who is also a deputy premier and the leader of the
rightwing League party, called for the closure of Italian ports
to vessels engaged in international missions in the
Mediterranean after an Irish navy ship took 106 rescued asylum
seekers to Messina at the weekend.
A defence ministry source said that this decision was not
Salvini's competence.
Salvini has spearheaded the new League-5-Star Movement
government's tough stance on migration, which has seen access to
Italian ports denied to NGO vessels rescuing asylum seekers at
sea.
"For as long as the EUNAVFOR Med mission is standing, the
only ports (open to it) are the Italian ones," Di Maio told
Radio 1.
"But our aim is to change the rules of engagement of the
mission".
Salvini, Di Maio and Premier Giuseppe Conte huddled over the
migrant issue in Rome Monday.
The government "acts and speaks with a single voice" on
migrants, Salvini said on his reported disagreement with Defence
Minister Trenta on whether Rome can block EU rescue ships.
Speaking after the "summit" with Conte, Luigi Di Maio and
Economy Minister Giovanni Tria, Salvini said Trenta "was not at
today's summit, not even in spirit".
Salvini said the government was "absolutely compact" on the
migrant rescue issue. He said "one thing is form and another is
substance.
"The government line is a single one to fight human
trafficking: I'm happy with what has been done in these first 38
days".
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA