On Thursday, French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced that Paris has suspended plans to take in 3,500 refugees currently in Italy, and called on “all the participants” in the EU’s migrant relocation mechanism to adopt similar measures after Rome refused to assign a port of safety to the Ocean Viking.
Darmanin called on “Germany in particular” to suspend the relocation of asylum seekers from Italy.
Darmanin said that Italy’s decision not to assign a port of safety to the Ocean Viking was “incomprehensible” and announced that Paris would allow the NGO-run search-and-rescue (SAR) ship to dock in Toulon on Friday.
He added that a third of the 234 asylum seekers on board the ship would be “relocated” in France.
The Ocean Viking, which is run by French NGO SOS Méditerranée, headed to France after Italy ignored its appeals to be assigned a port of safety for three weeks.
“It is clear that there will be extremely serious consequences for our bilateral relations,” said Darmanin.
Premier Giorgia Meloni’s new government has adopted a tough stance on NGO-run SAR ships, telling them to stay out of Italian waters.
In the case of two other ships, the Humanity 1 and the Geo Barents, the government initially only allowed people considered vulnerable to disembark after they docked in the port of Catania over the weekend.
On Tuesday Italian health authorities ordered that the remaining 250-odd people also be let off the ships, a decision Meloni blasted as “bizarre”.
