Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi on Wednesday defended the government’s tough stance on NGO-run search-and-rescue ships, saying their operations encouraged migrants to try to reach Italy across the Mediterranean.
“The presence of NGO ships continues to represent a pull factor (for migrants) and they are also important for criminal organizations that base their modus operandi on the presence of NGO assets in the area,” Piantedosi told the Senate.
The minister was reporting to parliament after a big diplomatic row with France over the Ocean Viking, a ship run by French NGO SOS Méditerranée.
The ship docked in Toulon with 230 asylum seekers on board on Friday after Rome ignored the ship’s appeals to be assigned a port of safety for weeks.
Piantedosi said the current voluntary EU mechanism for the redistribution of migrants had “failed to take off” and called for “a new European policy truly based on the principle of solidarity”.
He said Italy’s reception system for asylum seekers was at “saturation” point as it was currently holding around 100,000 people.
“We are acting with humanity and firmness on migrants,” he said.
“We have no intention of failing to respect our reception duties.
“But you don’t enter Italy illegally.
“Human traffickers shouldn’t be the ones to select who enters.
We want to manage migrant flows instead of having to endure them”.
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