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EU countries agree to share out Ocean Viking migrants

23 August 2019 22:40 (UTC +04:00)

Six European Union countries have agreed to take in the 356 migrants stranded at sea for two weeks aboard the Ocean Viking rescue vessel, ending the latest standoff in the bloc over migration across the Mediterranean, APA reports citing Reuters.

The migrants aboard the ship, which is run by French charities, will be taken to Malta before being received by France, Germany, Romania, Luxembourg, Portugal and Ireland, the EU migration commissioner and Maltese prime minister said.

“Welcome that a solution for the persons aboard Ocean Viking has been found and that all will be relocated,” EU Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said.

The plight of the Ocean Viking, run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and another French charity, SOS Méditerranée, has exposed Europe’s failure to come up with a coherent policy to deal with migration from Africa through Libya.

EU states have been at loggerheads over how to handle refugees and migrants reaching its shores since a 2015 spike in Mediterranean arrivals of people fleeing conflicts and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

With the EU’s eastern, ex-communist states refusing to host any of the new arrivals, the bloc has increasingly turned to tightening its borders and asylum laws, turning people away or paying countries like Turkey to stop them reaching Europe.

Italy had long complained that it was not getting enough EU support before its far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, shut the country’s ports to rescue ships run by aid groups.

Since then, such vessels have repeatedly been left stuck at sea for days or weeks as EU states spar over what to do with the people aboard.

On Tuesday, around a hundred migrants stranded for weeks on board another rescue ship, the Open Arms, disembarked on the Italian island of Lampedusa - but only after Spain, France, Germany, Luxembourg and Portugal agreed to take them in.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney on Friday criticized the lack of coordinated EU response: “Ad hoc arrangements on a case by case basis is not sustainable or humane. EU is better than this!,” he said on Twitter.

Ireland decided to accept up to 100 asylum-seekers during the remainder of this year.