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The European Commission has urged its member states to show “solidarity” with Italy by accommodating more migrants after more than two thousand undocumented illegals landed on Italian shores over the weekend.
The small Italian island of Lampedusa – home to a population of just 6,500 and dubbed the gateway to Europe due to its strategic location near Tunisia – oversaw a record weekend of arrivals as 2,100 migrants primarily from Africa were escorted to its port and brought ashore for processing.
The island’s migration centre was so overwhelmed that many of the new arrivals slept on mattresses outside the entrance.
Former Italian deputy prime minister and interior minister, Matteo Salvini demanded an urgent discussion with prime minister Mario Draghi to address the surge of arrivals at a time when the government should be focusing on tackling the health pandemic in the country and reviving the Italian economy.
“A meeting with Draghi is necessary, with millions of Italians in difficulty we cannot think of thousands of illegal immigrants”, Salvini posted on his social media accounts.
As to the EU’s collective response, the bloc’s commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson has called on “other member states to support with relocation” of the illegal immigrants, the majority of whom will attempt to apply for asylum.
“I know it’s more difficult in these pandemic times but I think it’s possible to manage, and now it’s time to show solidarity towards Italy and to help in this situation,” Johansson added.
Attempts by the EU executive to facilitate a bloc-wide relocation scheme have been frustrated primarily by the Visegrad nations of Eastern Europe who have refused to share the burden of rehoming migrants from their southern European neighbours.
Hungary leader Viktor Orbán has been particularly vocal in his opposition to the EU’s suggested migrant quota for a number of years, indicating he will fight any EU effort to make it “mandatory to take in the kind of people in Hungary we don’t want“.
