(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) Most of the adult migrants rescued by the Ocean Viking NGO in
the Mediterranean have been denied entry into France, which allowed
the vessel to disembark after Italy blocked access to its ports,
the interior Ministry said Friday, trend reports citing al
arabiya .
The standoff has rekindled the EU immigration debate and
heightened tensions between France and Italy's new far-right
government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
After pleading for days to be allowed to dock in Italy, the
Ocean Viking and its 234 rescued migrants disembarked at the French
port of Toulon in what the French government called an
“exceptional” decision.
Around 40 minors have been placed in social care, while 189
adults were brought to a retention center to evaluate the validity
of their asylum requests, a senior interior ministry official said
at a hearing by the State Council, the country's top administrative
court.
Of those, 123 people did not provide sufficient proof to back up
their claims and were denied entry, the official said, without
specifying if or when they might be deported.
The 66 others will be transferred to 11 other EU nations,
including Germany, Finland and Portugal, that agreed to take them
in under a voluntary scheme that Italy wants to be made compulsory
for all EU members.
A French presidency official, requesting anonymity, called
Italy's refusal a“dirty trick” ahead of a crisis meeting of EU
interior ministers in Brussels next week.
Under international maritime law, vessels in distress must be
granted access to the nearest port, which means Italy takes in a
much larger share than its EU neighbors of the migrants rescued
while trying to cross from North Africa.
Meloni's government says it has already taken in 90,000 migrants
so far this year, and said its refusal to aid the Ocean Viking was
a signal to the EU that it needed a new burden-sharing system to
spread migrants across the bloc.
“We have to work together to find efficient solutions on
immigration,” the presidency official said, adding that migrants
taken in would be deducted from the total France has agreed to take
from Italy in coming months.
France has already suspended a plan to welcome 3,500 refugees
currently in Italy, with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin warning
Rome of“several consequences for our bilateral relations.”