Italy planning ‘nuclear option’ for migrants

Senior Italian government figures have threatened to allow 200,000 migrants who have reached Italy’s shores to travel across Europe by exploiting a little-known Brussels directive, as the country struggles to cope with a huge rise in refugees fleeing north Africa.

A minister and a senator are plotting to issue migrants with temporary European Union visas, in a move that has been described as a ‘‘nuclear option’’ for solving Italy’s refugee crisis.

Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni is livid that the rest of Europe has refused to take its fair share of migrants and that they have closed ports to rescue ships, as the number of refugees attempting the treacherous crossing from Libya to the continent has surged.

Mario Giro, the deputy foreign minister, and Luigi Manconi, a senator with the ruling Democratic Party, said that issuing migrants with temporary visas was under discussion.

Mattia Toaldo, a senior analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: ‘‘If migrants continue to arrive and Italy decides to give them papers to cross borders and leave Italy, it would be a nuclear option.

‘‘Italians have lost any hope of getting help from the EU and may say, ‘If you won’t make it a common challenge, we will’.’’

Giro and others from the Democratic Party believe that Italy can exploit European Council Directive 2001/55, which was drafted after the Balkans conflict to give temporary European entry permits to a large number of displaced people.

Such a move would create problems for the Schengen scheme, which allows all EU citizens to travel freely across the continent.

It would also cause a diplomatic war with France and Austria, with whom Italy shares borders. The two countries have used dogs and the threat of armoured vehicles to push back migrants who try to enter by that route.

‘‘Letting migrants travel once they reach Italy would create a real problem for our EU neighbours,’’ Manconi said. ‘‘But I hope it would force France to confront the migrant problem head on.’’

The plan would also be sweet revenge for Rome, which has been forced by Brussels to open centres to house, care for and process migrants sailing to Italy. In return, other EU states were supposed to accept a quota of migrants, but they have reneged on the agreement.

More than 86,000 migrants have reached Italy this year alone – a 10 per cent increase on the same period the year before. The number of migrants in detention centres across Italy has reached almost 200,000, the country’s capacity.