Italy/Germany
The Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, yesterday threatened to pull out of an emergency European migration summit called to help save Angela Merkel’s government and had to be won round in phone calls with the embattled German chancellor.
A draft accord for the meeting this weekend was withdrawn after Conte objected to pressure on those with external EU borders, such as Italy, to take back illegal migrants refused entry at Germany’s borders.
The row highlighted Merkel’s difficulty in finding agreement that asylum seekers should be kept in the first EU country they reach, as demanded by her Bavarian coalition allies. Her government came close to collapse over the issue this week when Merkel was given two weeks to find a solution by the rebel Bavarians.
The Italian government rejected a boat full of migrants picked up in the Mediterranean for the second time this month, this time operated by a German charity. Matteo Salvini, the hardline interior minister, told the Dutch-flagged Lifeline, to sail to the Netherlands after rescuing 226 migrants off Libya. He added that charity boats would no longer touch Italian soil and called the charities ‘‘arrogant and imprudent’’.
Italy has taken in around 650,000 boat migrants over the past five years, fuelling the rise of the far-right League party, which joined a coalition government this month.
Ten countries most affected by illegal migration are due to meet at the summit in Brussels, called by Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, at the behest of Merkel.
Conte threatened not to go unless the draft declaration was amended, prompting phone calls from Merkel. ‘‘The chancellor clarified that there had been a ‘misunderstanding’. The draft text released yesterday will be shelved,’’ Conte wrote on Facebook, adding that he would now attend.
The EU asylum system has broken down because of the strain put on arrival countries such as Italy, Greece and Malta. Germany has been reluctant to send too many migrants back but the Bavarian conservatives, who hold the interior ministry in Merkel’s coalition government, have vowed to step up rejections from July 1.
Merkel fears that unilateral Bavarian border controls will trigger a domino effect that topples the EU’s system of free movement between member countries.
Merkel also faces more opposition from the leaders of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, known as the Visegrad Four, who said they would shun the summit and vowed to resist hasty measures from it.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, who hosted the Visegrad talks in Budapest, said the Brussels meeting was against the normal customs of the EU and the proper forum was the regular meeting of all 28 EU leaders.
Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, said the four countries spoke ‘‘with one voice’’ on the migrant issue.
Pressure on Merkel increased at home this week when Holger Steltzner, editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, blamed her for splitting the EU with her migrant and euro policies. –