Summit to hammer out deal to settle African asylum seekers around 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 minisummit 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 stand-offs with NGO rescue ships, which were only resolved after other countries agreed to accept the migrants on a case-bycase 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.
The meeting in Malta is intended to replace ad hoc solutions with a permanent arrangement under which migrants will be allowed to swiftly disembark in Malta or Italy on the understanding that they will then be transferred to other EU countries.
Rome received encouraging signs of support this week in visits by presidents Emmanuel Macron of France and Germany’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who said: ‘‘Italy must not be left alone.’’ Macron assured the new government – a coalition of Five Star and the centre-Left Democratic Party – he supports the permanent resettlement deal.
The French are said to be prepared to take in refugees fleeing war, such as Syrians and Afghans, but resistant to those deemed economic migrants, such as the thousands of sub-Saharan Africans who make the Mediterranean crossing each year. ‘‘We need an automatic European mechanism of taking in the migrants that would permit Malta and and Italy [to know] that before they arrive, the migrants are taken on,’’ Macron said in Rome.
Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister, said: ‘‘It’s essential for the EU to turn a page in the direction of a structural management and no longer an emergency management of the flows [of asylum seekers].’’
Tomorrow’s meeting will include Malta, Italy, Germany, France and Finland, which has the rotating EU presidency.