“There was a political agreement in the Council today,” claimed Nancy Faeser as she left the meeting of EU interior ministers in Brussels on Thursday evening. Only Poland and Hungary turned against the crisis mechanism at the meeting, which has been fought over for a long time. At the same time, the Spanish Interior Minister, currently President of the Council, explained one floor above that an agreement was close, but would still need a few days. There are still “small things” that need to be sorted out that “affect everyone,” said Fernando Grande-Marlaska. Both statements hid what had actually happened: Germany and Italy were embroiled in a fundamental dispute over sea rescue.
The Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi did not raise any objections in the ministers’ public meeting, but did raise them afterwards. As Italian media unanimously reported on Friday, he had been directly instructed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni not to agree to a draft text presented by the Spanish Council Presidency. Piantedosi then left Brussels early for meetings with the interior ministers of Libya and Tunisia in Palermo, which also focused on curbing migration across the central Mediterranean.
As diplomats reported, the conflict was sparked by a change in the text with which Spain wanted to accommodate the federal government, which had itself blocked an agreement for months. It was about the cases in which member states can claim that their asylum system is overburdened due to a crisis influx or targeted instrumentalization of migrants by third parties.
Instrumentalization of migrants?
In the Spanish draft, which is available to the FAZ, an exception was formulated: “Humanitarian aid operations that are carried out in accordance with European standards should not be viewed as instrumentalizing migrants if they do not have the purpose of destabilizing the Union or a member state.” This The sentence had already been in the original text, which Germany rejected in July. Except that it said “should” instead of “shall” and the sentence appeared in a recital while it now appeared in the law section. Both changes make it more binding.
This is in Berlin’s interest because it strengthens the sea rescue in the Mediterranean desired by the federal government. However, it contradicts the policy of the Meloni government. She has long accused private aid organizations of promoting irregular migration. This is not a technical detail, but a fundamental political conflict. This was also made public on Friday.
If Berlin supports rescue ships under the German flag with taxpayers’ money, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told the newspaper “La Repubblica”, then the boat migrants picked up by these ships would have to be brought directly to Germany. “That is the only possible solution.” In Rome people are “very surprised” that at the very time of negotiations on an EU asylum compromise, seven private rescue ships – including several under the German flag – were operating in the Mediterranean to transport boat migrants to Lampedusa bring to.
Criticism of the financing of private rescue ships
At the end of last week, Giorgia Meloni criticized the state financing of rescue ships from private aid organizations in a letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz. “I was surprised to learn that your government, without consulting with the Italian government, has decided to allocate significant resources to non-governmental organizations involved in the reception of irregular migrants on Italian territory and in the rescue in the Mediterranean,” it said in this.
EU partners who wanted to help Italy should instead focus on “structural solutions” such as working with North African transit countries to curb migration across the central Mediterranean, Meloni said. The criticism related to a Bundestag decision, supported by the government, to spend a total of two million euros on rescuing refugees. According to the Foreign Office, the first payments to two organizations for a land supply project and one for rescue at sea are imminent.
A response from the Chancellery to Meloni’s letter had apparently not been received as of Friday. In addition to Meloni and Tajani, other cabinet members of the center-right coalition in Rome also sharply criticized Germany’s state financing of private rescue ships. In this way, Berlin is actually supporting the business of the smuggler gangs, who send migrants in unseaworthy boats from the North African coast on the dangerous crossing to Italy, it was said.
In Brussels, as in Rome, it is expected that the disagreements can only be resolved in a conversation between Scholz and Meloni. Both will travel to an informal meeting of heads of state and government in Granada next week. A decision on the crisis regulation is likely to be blocked by then, although the Chancellor himself said on Wednesday that “nothing will stop Berlin”.
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