Italy calls for help accepting migrants

ROME/BRUSSELS: Italy has appealed to the European Union for help in taking in African migrants, even raising the possibility of closing its ports to humanitarian rescue ships to pressure EU partners, sources familiar with the matter said.

Rome’s EU ambassador, Maurizio Massari, met EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and told him that ‘‘the situation we are facing is serious and Europe cannot turn its back’’, an Italian government source said.

‘‘The idea of blocking humanitarian ships flying foreign flags from returning to Italian ports has been discussed,’’ an Italian government source said.

That may force EU partners to take them instead because many of the charities that operate rescue ships are based in other EU countries, including Malta and Germany, the source said.

‘‘Italy has reached saturation point,’’ he said, adding that Rome had planned for 200,000 beds for asylumseekers and those were almost all taken. Italy has brought in over half a million boat migrants since 2014, and a record 181,000 came last year. This year, arrivals are up about 14% on the corresponding period last year to 75,000.

Italy’s neighbours have closed their borders to try to keep migrants from moving north as they did in the past, and some EU partners such as Poland and Hungary have refused to host some asylumseekers to ease the burden on Italy and Greece, another frontline country.

Since Saturday, some 11,000 migrants have been pulled from unsafe and overcrowded boats, but overall numbers for June are in line with last year and the year before, according to Flavio Di Giacomo, spokesman for the International Organisation for Migration in Rome.