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News > Italy

Italy, Malta, France, Germany Work on Deal to Allocate Migrants

  • The Italian navy's vessel Cassiopea arrives with migrants on board at Pozzallo, Italy Sept. 2, 2019.

    The Italian navy's vessel Cassiopea arrives with migrants on board at Pozzallo, Italy Sept. 2, 2019. | Photo: Reuters

Published 11 September 2019
Opinion

Under the "Predictive Temporary Allocation Program", France and Germany would accept to receive a percentage of migrants arriving in Italy and Malta.

Italy, Malta, France and Germany are working on the "Predictive Temporary Allocation Program", an agreement which is expected to manage migrant landings and relocate them more effectively and efficiently.

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According to local media La Stampa, the agreement will be signed on Sep. 23 at a meeting in which the Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte will also hold talks with the European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen.

The draft agreement states that when a French or German humanitarian ship makes a rescue at the Mediterranean sea, Italy and Malta will accept to allow the landing of migrants in the first available safe harbor.

After this first reception in European territory, however, France and Germany will welcome migrants in their own territories in a time no longer than a month.

So far the number of migrants that would be received by Paris and Berlin is being negotiated because both Italy and Malta request that France and Germany take care of all the landed migrants and not just 25 percent of them.

On a related event, Carola Rackete, the German captain who defied Italy's ban on boats bringing migrants ashore, received on Tuesday an award from the Catalan parliament in Barcelona, Spain.

After urging the European Union countries to agree on a policy for redistributing migrants, Rackete said she was determined to carry on rescuing migrants, even though her ship, the Sea-Watch 3, remains under custody at an Italian port.

"We are definitely willing [to rescue people in maritime distress] and there's a full crew on board ready to sail at any point," the 31-year-old woman said, recalling that Europe is "responsible in many ways for what is happening” in the migrants’ countries.

"I would hope that there's an agreement to transfer all the people that arrive in Italian ports" to EU countries, she said. "I hope then the Italian state would open the ports and allow people to disembark."

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