Italy: No help from EU with migrant surge
The pandemic briefly slowed the flood of migrants landing on Europe’s southern shores, said Filippo Santigliano in La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno (Italy). But desperate Africans and Middle Easterners are once again piling into rickety boats in Libya and sailing across the Mediterranean in search of a better life. So far this year, at least 11,000 migrants have reached Italy’s coasts—up from 4,100 in the same period in 2020—and more than 500 others have died while attempting the crossing. Many of those who survive land on the tiny island of Lampedusa, where 2,100 migrants arrived in a single day last week. To curb the spread of Covid-19, Italy has converted a ferry into a quarantine ship, so new arrivals can be tested and held until they are virus-free. But with more migrants landing every day, that ship will soon run out of space. Why won’t the European Union help us? “Italy is a civilized country that does not let people die at sea,” but we should not shoulder this burden alone.
The EU is paralyzed, said Bernd Riegert in DeutscheWelle.com (Germany). A decades-old regulation requires refugees to claim asylum in their EU country of arrival, which puts a heavy burden on frontline nations such as Italy, Greece, Spain, and Malta. During the migrant crisis of 2015, when more than 1 million asylum seekers crossed the Mediterranean, the EU tried to amend the policy so that migrants would be distributed equally across the bloc. But Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia refused to abide by any quota system, and only a tiny number of migrants were relocated. Richer countries such as Germany and France promised to help, but these days, “when Italy asks, nothing happens.” Germany and France both have elections next year, and their governments fear that taking in migrants will bolster the far right.
The Italian government has considered proposing that the EU pay Libya to stop migrants from leaving, said Luca Gambardella in Il Foglio (Italy). But Libya is part of the problem. The number of migrants held in detention centers there stays remarkably constant, even though the Libyan coast guard regularly intercepts boats. Why? A Libyan diplomatic source told me that local authorities “resell the migrants to human traffickers,” who then send them back to sea. This racket also gives the corrupt government in Tripoli a way “to subtly threaten Europe: Give us more political and economic aid or we’ll reopen the taps of migrant departures.”
In the meantime, Italy is waging a “guerrilla war” against the NGO ships that rescue migrants from sinking boats, said Matthias Rüb in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany). Former far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini drew international condemnation when he barred those ships from Italian ports. His successor, Luciana Lamorgese, has implemented a more palatable version of the same policy. She lets the NGO ships land and discharge their migrant passengers, and then impounds the vessels and arrests the crews for violations ranging from safety infractions to human trafficking. Punishing the rescuers is no way to deal with migration—but Italy has been left with few options.