Italy threatens to pull EU funds if bloc does not come to aid of migrant ship

Italy’s deputy prime minister has threatened to pull the country’s EU funding if the bloc does not come to the aid of 150 people stranded aboard an Italian coast guard ship.

The migrants have been blocked at the Sicilian port of Catania on the Diciotti vessel since Monday night because the Italian government is refusing to allow them to disembark without commitments from the EU to take some of them in.

A meeting of high-level representatives from around a dozen EU member states was being held on Friday to discuss the issue, and a decision was anticipated.

“In recent months we have had the chance to see how a soft line with the European Union worked and how a hard line works,” Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said in an interview published on Facebook on Thursday.

“If tomorrow [Friday] nothing comes out of the European Commission meeting, if they decide nothing regarding the Diciotti and the redistribution of the migrants, I and the whole Five Star Movement will no longer be prepared to give 20 billion euros [$23 billion] to the European Union every year.”

EU figures for 2016 say Italy contributed just under 14 billion euros to the EU budget – less than 1 percent of its gross national income – while the bloc spent 11.6 billion euros in Italy.

Di Maio, who heads the anti-establishment Five Star, said Italy didn’t want the “mickey taken out of us by the union’s other countries” on the distribution of migrants.

“The European Union was born of principles like solidarity. If it is not capable of redistributing 170 people it has serious problems with its founding principles,” he said in an interview with state broadcaster RAI.

Friday’s meeting follows Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s decision to leave the majority of the migrants on board the Diciotti after they were rescued on August 15.