France will open the port of Marseille to the Ocean Viking, one of three NGO run migrant rescue ships currently in a standoff with Italy over disembarking migrants, a French interior ministry source said on Tuesday.
“France is gearing to open the port of Marseille to the Ocean Viking ship, either on the night of Wednesday-Thursday or during the day on Thursday,” the source said.
“It will depend on when it leaves the southern Mediterranean.”
The Ocean Viking, a humanitarian ship chartered since July 2019 by the French SOS Méditerranée association, has been at sea waiting to be assigned a port of safety for almost three weeks, with 234 people on board, including 55 minors, 43 of them unaccompanied.
Two other charity ships are in Catania port, having been allowed to disembark only the most vulnerable of their human cargo.
On Tuesday, Transport Minister Matteo Salvini welcomed France’s decision to allow migrants aboard the rescue ship to land in Marseille.
The deputy premier and infrastructure minister, who stopped NGO ships as interior minister from 2018 to 2019, said “good, the wind has changed”.
French interior ministry sources have said all will be allowed to land at the French port, without any selection as has been practised by Italian authorities who have let the vulnerable off, but forced the healthier migrants to stay aboard two ships at Catania.
