Italy says Catholic Church, Albania and Ireland will accept stranded migrants
The migrants, mainly from Eritrea, have been stranded in the port of Catania since Monday because the far-right Italian government was demanding that other European Union states take some in
Catholic bishops, tiny Albania and Ireland agreed to take the 140 migrants blocked aboard an Italian coastguard vessel, Premier Giuseppe Conte said on Saturday, announcing the end of 10-day stand-off over the asylum seekers but making clear an angry Italy could avenge a perceived lack of overall European Union solidarity by refusing to approve the bloc’s next multi-year budget.
“Italy must take note that the spirit of solidarity is struggling to translate into concrete acts,” Conte said in a statement.
Conte referred to declarations made at an EU summit in late June promising to help Italy and other Mediterranean countries deal with the burden of migrants rescued from human traffickers’ unseaworthy boats.
In his role as head of a nearly three-month-old populist coalition government, Conte said Italy under current conditions “doesn’t consider it possible to express adhesion to a proposed budget that underpins a policy so incoherent on the social level.”
Earlier in the week, some in the government threatened to withhold nearly 20 billion euros (US$23 billion) in contributions to the EU if member nations did not volunteer to take the last group of rescued migrants reaching Italy.