Summit to hammer out deal to settle African asylum seekers

Europe

EU officials will converge on Malta tomorrow to agree a deal for asylum seekers who reach Europe from North Africa to be settled around the bloc.

France and Germany are reported to be well disposed to taking a greater share of those who reach Italy and Malta from Libya. The mini-summit is the latest sign that Italy is being welcomed back into the European fold, after the turbulence of the last 14 months when Matteo Salvini, interior minister in the last coalition government, clashed repeatedly with Brussels.

Salvini’s decision last year to close Italy’s ports to asylum seekers led to a series of standoffs with NGO rescue ships, which were only resolved after other countries agreed to accept the migrants on a case-by-case basis. The coalition that he dominated, an unwieldy alliance of his hard-right League party and the populist Five Star Movement, collapsed last month, and a more Europhile government is in place.