After the EU summit on migration this week, during which the member states agreed to cooperate better to lighten the load of countries that see the most arrivals like Greece and Italy, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini sat down with daily Corriere Della Serra who asked him what this meant for any new boats arriving.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Italy's interior minister Matteo Salvini has said that migrants saved by boats operated by NGOs won't be allowed into the country <a href="https://t.co/04V1SxVgRt">pic.twitter.com/04V1SxVgRt</a></p>— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) <a href="https://twitter.com/TRTWorldNow/status/1013208186470293504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">30 June 2018</a></blockquote>
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The rightwing leader of Lega Nord made it very clear that because the EU had agreed to set up screening centres outside its own borders to check whether refugees are eligible for asylum, any NGO ship arriving in an Italian port carrying migrants were now no longer ‘legitimate.’
Related coverage: https://thegoldwater.com/news/29995-EU-New-Deal-Reached-To-Tackle-Immigration-After-Marathon-Session
Mr Salvini repeated those words on his facebook account carrying the hashtag #chiudiamoiporti or #closetheports. In the accompanying message he stated that his decree would: "halt the mafia of human trafficking: the fewer that depart, the fewer will perish."
In recent years, hundreds of thousands of migrants had reached Italy, mainly the large island of Sicily via the Mediterranean route from Libya. During the first few months of 2017, when this new route which was used as the Balkan route shut down (Hungary first put up a fence and other countries soon followed), many human smugglers tried to get people across in small boats, resulting in many deaths.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ITALY?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ITALY</a> took care more than 600.000 illegal migrants (only 8% are real refugees) in the last five years with 5 bilion Euro of new public debt. Enough is enough. Proud to be a <a href="https://twitter.com/matteosalvinimi?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@matteosalvinimi</a> voter!</p>— PoliticamenteScorretto (@IlBertoldo) <a href="https://twitter.com/IlBertoldo/status/1013156460786847746?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">30 June 2018</a></blockquote>
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European NGO’s, seeing the images of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, started hiring ships soon afterwards which would travel near the coast of Libya to pick up people, providing in essence what Mr Salvini called, an illegal ‘shuttle service’ to Italy.
Related coverage: https://thegoldwater.com/news/29716-EU-Italy-PM-Conte-Slams-Summit-To-Save-Merkel
Under the previous Italian government, in 2017 and the beginning of 2018, those ships were allowed to dock in Sicilian ports, leaving the island with several hundred thousand of African migrants. Mr Salvini’s Lega Nord ran on a platform of sending those migrants back to Africa as he stated the ‘Italian taxpayer’ should not pick up their tab.
He won a resounding victory in this year’s election and, as the country’s new Interior Minister, has started sending back NGO ships as promised, resulting in an EU-wide crisis and a summit on migration.
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