The vice president of the European Commission, which oversees migration, said that the meeting of European interior ministers on Friday should serve to find structured and common solutions to solve crises such as the “Ocean Viking” ship.
“This is one more opportunity to tell ministers that they should not go from crisis to crisis, from ship to ship, from incident to incident,” said Margaritis Schinas of Greece, arguing that the appropriate model is the European Pact on Migration and Asylum. , proposed by the European Commission in September 2020 but which is still being discussed by the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU).
This Friday, the EU interior ministers meet in Brussels, in an extraordinary meeting, from which no concrete decisions are expected, but solutions to “facilitate dialogue”, in an attempt to reduce the climate of tension around migration issues that have caused divisions within the EU.
The meeting was scheduled after a diplomatic dispute between Italy and France sparked by the Italian refusal to host a humanitarian rescue shipthe “Viking of the Ocean”.
The immigrants would later be welcomed in France, but the “Ocean Viking” case ended up triggering a diplomatic crisis between Paris and Rome, with the French authorities calling for “European initiatives” for “better control of external borders.” [da UE] and solidarity mechanisms.
Paris also decided to break with the voluntary relocation of refugees. In recent weeks, Brussels has proposed an action plan with 20 measures, including the reactivation of the voluntary relocation platform, which can serve as a bridge to the permanent mechanism that exists within the framework of the European Pact on Migration and Asylum. .
“We hope that at the end of the mandate of this Commission we will have that agreement”Schinas said, before the meeting, thus pointing to a time horizon that ends in 2024.
The plan calls for the EU to support discussions in the International Maritime Organization on the need for a structure, as well as the definition of guidelines for ships, especially with regard to search and rescue activities in the European context.
This year, more than 90,000 migrants have reached Europe through the Mediterranean, mainly from Libya and Tunisia – an increase of almost 50% compared to the same period in 2021 – and almost 2,000 people have died or are missing at sea.
Regarding the “Ocean Viking” crisis, this Friday upon his arrival at the meeting, the French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, He criticized the attitude of the Italian authorities, accusing them of ignoring the Law of the Sea, by not giving the ship a safe port.
The Spanish Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, stressed, in turn, that migration should not be the responsibility only of the countries of entry, but of the entire EU, and supported the Brussels initiative to speed up the migration debate.
His Greek counterpart, Notis Mitarachi, defended that the EU proposal goes in the right direction, insisting that the joint EU response must look for solutions to reduce the number of irregular arrivals in the EU, as well as establish a “mechanism of compulsory solidarity”, to help the 27 countries to share the problem of migration.
“We talked a lot about the migration crisis, it is time for solutions, actions and results”, said the Greek minister.
Source: Observadora
