France moots sanctions as Italy blocks migrants

EU states that refuse to accept migrants should face financial penalties, French President Emmanuel Macron said yesterday on the eve of an emergency mini-summit in Brussels about the escalating crisis dividing Europe.It came after Italy’s new populist government defiantly declared that its ports were closed to foreign-flagged rescue ships, after accusing fellow EU members of failing to share the burden of migrant arrivals.Macron, speaking after talks in Paris with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, said member states that benefit from EU co-operation but “claim national self-interest when it comes to the issue of migrants” should have sanctions imposed on them.“You cannot have countries that benefit massively from the solidarity of the EU, but then massively assert their national selfishness when it comes to migration issues,” he said.Macron said that European co-operation had managed to cut migration flows by close to 80% and problems stemmed from “secondary” movements of migrants within Europe.“The reality is that Europe is not experiencing a migration crisis of the same magnitude as the one it experienced in 2015,” the French president said.He added: “A country like Italy has not at all the same migratory pressure as last year .... the crisis we are experiencing today in Europe is a political crisis.”Other European countries should accept migrants who have a right to asylum, Macron said, though he did not mention specific countries.He added that the refugee centres would have to comply with the rules of the UN refugee agency UNHCR.The French and Spanish leaders also supported the creation of closed reception centres, located in the countries where migrants often arrive first, to hold asylum-seekers while their claims are processed.Macron’s comments drew a furious reaction from Italy’s new populist government.Co-deputy prime minister and head of the M5S party Luigi Di Maio accused the French leader of being totally oblivious to the scale of the problem.“Macron’s statements on the fact that there is no migration crisis in Italy show that he is completely out of touch with reality. Evidently, the previous Italian governments told him that the problem did not exist,” he said on Facebook.“Italy indeed faces a migration emergency and it’s partly because France keeps pushing back people at the border. Macron risks making his country Italy’s No.1 enemy on this emergency,” Di Maio added.Meanwhile, a German charity vessel with more than 230 migrants aboard remained in limbo off the coast of Malta.“The Lifeline, an illegal ship with 239 immigrants on board is in Maltese waters,” Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini wrote on Facebook.“These boats can forget about reaching Italy, I want to stop the business of trafficking and mafia,” said Salvini, whose country is on the frontline of the migrant crisis.Malta also refused to take in the ship, but delivered humanitarian aid.Salvini said that his country had faced 650,000 arrivals by sea over the past four years, 430,000 asylum requests and the hosting of 170,000 “alleged refugees” for an overall cost of more than €5bn ($5.8bn).“If for the arrogant President Macron this is not a problem, we invite him to stop insulting and to show instead some concrete generosity by opening up France’s many ports and letting children, men and women through at Ventimiglia,” he said in a statement, referring to the northeastern Italian town at the border with France.Salvini’s tough talk came on the eve of an informal mini-summit of 16 leaders in Brussels to address the thorny issue of how the EU can tackle the renewed influx of migrants and refugees seeking a new life in Europe.Underscoring the divisions, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic – which reject any suggestion of mandatory refugee resettlement among EU members – said that they would boycott the meeting.The crisis has also caused ructions in Germany, with Chancellor Angela Merkel facing a rebellion from her coalition allies over her policies.Earlier this month Salvini triggered an EU-wide row when he barred the French charity-run Aquarius rescue ship, carrying 630 migrants, from docking in Italy.The move was echoed by nearby Malta and the ship was later welcomed by Spain.The neighbours, who are close to the search and rescue zones of ships, squabbled again over the latest rescue vessel Lifeline on Friday, when Salvini said Malta should open its ports.But Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said Lifeline “broke rules” by ignoring Italy’s directions and should move towards its original destination “to prevent escalation”.Rome accuses the Lifeline of having acted in contravention of international law by taking on board migrants while the Libyan coastguard was intervening.Mission Lifeline denied Italy’s accusations and said that discussions were under way between different states to host the boat and those rescued.The Italian government has said both Lifeline, run by German NGO Mission Lifeline, and another ship Seefuchs, run by German charity Sea-Eye, would be seized and directed to Italian ports for investigation “into their legal status”.More than 400 migrants were also rescued in three operations off the coast of Spain yesterday, just days after Madrid took in the more than 600 rejected by Italy and Malta.The Libyan navy said five people died and nearly 200 were rescued off its coast while trying to cross the Mediterranean.A Danish cargo ship carrying 113 migrants was also stationed near the Sicilian port of Pozzallo waiting for instructions from Italy.The Alexander Maersk changed course after picking up a distress call on Friday, a spokesman for Maersk Line said, without specifying where the migrants were rescued.“The European Union must place the preservation and protection of people in distress before any other political considerations,” European NGO SOS Mediterranee said yesterday.Italy’s hardline stance comes at a time of deep EU tensions on immigration.Today’s mini-summit is supposed to prepare for a full summit next week, where 28 EU leaders will discuss plans to overhaul the bloc’s asylum system, which has been under severe pressure since the migration crisis exploded in 2015.German Chancellor Merkel – facing a ferocious political backlash for letting in more than 1mn asylum-seekers into Europe’s biggest economy – played down expectations of a quick solution.“We know that no solution will be reached on Thursday and Friday at the level of the 28 member states ... on the overall issue of migration,” she said on a visit to Lebanon.Instead, she said, “bilateral, trilateral and multilateral” deals must be reached to tackle the issue.German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has given Merkel a fortnight to find a European deal to curb new arrivals, failing which he vowed to order border police to turn back migrants.Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis said on Friday that he was also ready to start turning away migrants if Berlin and Vienna did so.Macron with Sanchez as the Spanish premier leaves the Elysee Presidential Palace in Paris.Singer Sting blasts leaders as ‘cowards’ over migration crisisReutersAthensBritish singer and actor Sting called world leaders “half men and cowards” yesterday for their inability to solve the refugee crisis.German Chancellor Angela Merkel has already played down expectations of a breakthrough at talks among EU leaders today on the migration dispute dividing Europe and threatening her own government.Austrian Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache said yesterday that he expects a chain reaction across the European Union if Germany closes its borders to refugees.Migration policies in the US have also been in the spotlight.“Thank God for Greece because you have shown the way,” said Sting, whose real name is Gordon Sumner, at an Amnesty International event in Athens.“You have shown how to treat refugees when other people are building walls. When children are being taken from their mothers and put in cages, you are acting with compassion and generosity and commonsense,” he said.“Because our so-called leaders, a sad parade of half-men, cowards, have not got the solutions ... Once again Greece has shown us how to be civilised,” he added.Nearly 1mn refugees passed through and got support from Greece in 2015, as the country was dealing with its own major financial crisis.US President Donald Trump on Wednesday abandoned a policy of separating migrant children from their parents on the US-Mexico border, after images of youngsters in cages sparked outrage at home and abroad.Sting told Reuters that the family separation policy was “brutal” and “barbaric”.The former frontman for The Police was in Athens for two concerts as part of world tour.Sting: our so-called leaders, a sad parade of half-men, cowards, have not got the solutions.German interior ministerwill not back downDPABerlinGerman Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said in a newspaper interview published yesterday that he would not back down in his dispute with Chancellor Angela Merkel over the Germany’s migration policy.In comments carried by the German Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Seehofer reiterated his determination to start turning people away from the border unless an acceptable solution was found to the migration question.He said that it would be extremely unusual for Merkel to use her political power to veto his plans.“We will not allow that to happen,” he said, adding that the chancellery had “made a mountain out of a molehill”.A bitter dispute over migration erupted this week between Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their more conservative Bavarian sister party and coalition partner, the Christian Social Union (CSU), which is headed by Seehofer.The CSU wants to start rejecting all asylum-seekers who have already registered elsewhere in Europe from the beginning of July.German lawmakers have said a decision to go it alone by Seehofer could force Merkel to dismiss him and may even bring the coalition government, which also includes the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), but depends on the CSU for a majority.Referring to an emergency EU migration summit planned for today, Seehofer said: “If the EU summit does not bring effective solutions, migrants already registered in another EU country will be rejected.”He said he had never suggested the border should be completely sealed off.“It’s about being able to reject effectively,” he said.