Italy open to migrants – for five weeks only

ITALY has temporarily reopened its ports to migrant boats pending an Euwide deal on distributing new arrivals, but it has scorned the latest offer from Brussels to pay governments €6,000 (£5,340) per asylum seeker taken in.

Italian ports were closed to migrant boats last month. However, it will now accept the asylum seekers temporarily, giving the EU five weeks to reach a deal before it shuts the ports again.

Yesterday, Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister, and leader of the anti-immigration League party, seemed unimpressed with the EU’S latest attempt to reach a deal.

“If they want to give money to someone else let them do so, Italy doesn’t need charity,” he said, following the publication of a new European Commission “concept paper” which offers the €6,000 payments to host countries.

Under the new plan, EU members accepting disembarked refugees in their territory would be paid €6,000 per person from EU funds, up to a cap of 500 migrants from each boat.

Brussels also called for the creation of temporary migrant processing centres. These voluntary “controlled centres” would sort migrants into genuine refugees, who would qualify for settlement in the EU, and “irregular” or economic migrants who would be returned, the commission said, before promising that all of the infrastructure and operational costs would be covered by the EU budget.

The strategy, which also includes setting up similar “regional disembarkation centres” in North African countries such as Libya, was published in Brussels yesterday. The commission said it would only contact potential host countries once it had the backing of member states for the plan, but Libya has already ruled out any centre.

New fiercely anti-migrant governments in Italy and Austria have pushed migration centre-stage. Asked if he would open a refugee centre, Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s chancellor said: “Of course not. We are not a firstarrival country, unless people jump with parachutes.”

The commission’s paper called for a swift pilot scheme to be rolled out. EU diplomats will discuss the commission concept paper at a meeting in Brussels today.