BRUSSELS: German Chancellor Angela Merkel says a summit of 16 European Union countries has created “a lot of goodwill” to discuss EU disagreements on migration.
Merkel and 15 other European leaders met in Brussels on Sunday to tackle the immigration policies that have divided the bloc since more than 1 million migrants arrived in 2015.
The German chancellor said the summit participants agreed that Europe’s outer borders need to be better protected to keep people from entering illegally and that “all countries should share all the burdens” related to migration.
Merkel says the countries that most migrants reach first shouldn’t be left alone to deal with the influx and that it also shouldn’t be up to newcomers to decide in which European country they get to apply for asylum.
Italy’s coast guard is responding to a Spanish aid group’s criticism of having its offer to help rescue some 1,000 migrants from the Mediterranean Sea declined, saying the responsibility for coordinating the rescue has been handed off to Libya.
Italian coast guard officials said they received distress calls from six different migrant boats Sunday that were in Libya’s search-and-rescue territory. The Italians said they alerted ships in the area and formally advised the Libyan coast guard, which officially took over the rescue.
Spanish NGO Proactiva Open Arms complained that Italy’s coast guard declined its offer of help.
Italy’s hard-line new government has refused to let aid groups’ rescue ships dock, arguing that they are serving as taxi services for Libyan-based human traffickers. Italy has also sought to bolster the Libyan coast guard’s patrol capacity, but human rights organizations say Libya isn’t a safe place for migrants.
The Italian government’s proposal for revamping how Europe manages migration calls for creating “international protection centers” that would screen asylum requests in common countries of transit.
The 10-point plan Premier Giuseppe Conte presented at an emergency meeting in Brussels on Sunday also seeks more European Union support to help the Libyan coast guard better patrol its coasts for departing migrant boats.
The plan argues that existing European asylum rules are obsolete and “paradoxical.” The regulation effectively means migrants can only apply for asylum in the European country where they first arrive, usually Italy or Greece.
The Italian proposal says other European countries must create welcome centers for asylum-seekers so the burden is dispersed.
It also calls for EU investment in migrants’ home countries, presumably as a way to persuade them to stay.
Italy’s firebrand interior minister is defending Italy’s decision to ask the Libyan coast guard to rescue an estimated 1,000 migrants without the help of aid groups.
Matteo Salvini was responding to the alarm raised by Spanish aid group Proactiva Open Arms, which said Italian coast guard authorities had declined their offer to come to the migrants’ rescue.
In a tweet Sunday, Salvini said: “It’s right that the Libyan authorities intervene, as they’ve been doing for days, without having the NGOs interrupt them and disturb them.”
Barcelona Mayor Ada Colao, who previously offered Barcelona as a port when Italy refused entry to another aid group’s rescue ship, repeated her willingness to take in the migrants and urged Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to intervene to allow Proactiva’s ship to “save lives.”
She said: “Italy wants to leave the migrants in the hands of Libya, where they torture, rape and enslave” migrants.
