France warns Italy as EU holds talks on migration

France on Friday accused Italy of failing to respect the law of the sea as European interior ministers held crisis talks on how to handle the arrival of would-be refugees.

The European Union hosted talks in Brussels after a row erupted between Paris and Rome over a migrant ship and eastern member states sounded the alarm about new arrivals via the Balkan land route.

Numbers of asylum seekers haven’t yet hit the levels of 2015 and 2016, but the dispute has already undermined a stopgap pact to redistribute the arrivals more evenly around the 27-nation bloc.

Brussels has been struggling for years to agree and implement a new policy for sharing responsibility for migrants and asylum seekers but the ugly row has brought the issue to the fore.

Earlier this month, Italy’s new government under farright leader Georgia Meloni refused to allow a Norwegianflagged NGO ship to dock with 234 migrants rescued from the Mediterranean.

The row undermined the EU’S stop-gap interim solution and led to Paris calling extraordinary meeting.