Italy must “play its role” and “respect its European commitments”. While SOS Méditerranée asked Tuesday to dock in France, with the Ocean Viking and more than 200 surviving migrants on board, the French government is raising the tone.
“The boat is currently in Italian territorial waters, there are extremely clear European rules and which have moreover been accepted by the Italians who are, in fact, the first beneficiary of a European financial solidarity mechanism”, said government spokesman Olivier Véran recalled this Wednesday morning. He considered that “the current attitude of the Italian government, and in particular the declarations and the refusal to let this boat dock” was “unacceptable”.
On Tuesday, the far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni thanked France for accepting to welcome the Ocean Viking from the European NGO SOS Méditerranée and its 234 migrant passengers. “We want to say how much we appreciate France’s decision to take its share of responsibility for the migratory emergency, which until now has rested on the shoulders of Italy and a few other Mediterranean countries, by opening its ports to the vessel Ocean Viking,” Giorgia Meloni said in a statement.
According to Time.news, an Italian news agency, the matter was settled between Ms Meloni and French President Emmanuel Macron during COP27 in Egypt.
“The diplomatic mechanisms are still in action at the time I am speaking to you so I cannot go beyond that”, swept Olivier Véran this Wednesday morning. “We still have a few hours of discussions left and, in any case, we are still at this stage,” he added, promising nevertheless that “nobody will let this boat run the slightest risk, at the obvious to those on board”.
“In keeping with its tradition of hospitality”
“Faced with the deafening silence of Italy”, SOS Méditerranée said it had asked France on Tuesday to assign a safe port to the Ocean Viking which “should arrive in international waters near Corsica on November 10”.
Gilles Simeoni, the president of the Corsican executive, announced on Tuesday evening that he was ready to temporarily accommodate the boat in one of the island’s ports, “to avoid any loss of human life”.
The President of the Assembly of Corsica Marie-Antoinette Maupertuis, quoted by our colleagues from France 3, is in the same spirit: “Faithful to its tradition of welcoming, and to avoid a tragedy, Corsica is ready to make available one of its ports and to provide emergency humanitarian aid to the 234 passengers”.
The French government had already denounced on Tuesday evening the “unacceptable behavior” of the Italian authorities who refused to allow the ship Ocean Viking to dock. Rome’s attitude is “contrary to the law of the sea and the spirit of European solidarity”, a French government source told AFP. “We expect something else from a country which is today the first beneficiary of the European solidarity mechanism,” added this source.