French centrist HAILS Emmanuel Macron for SOLVING Aquarius migrant boat stand-off
CENTRIST lawmaker Frédéric Descrozaille said yesterday French President Emmanuel Macron deserved credit for the deal between France and four other European countries to take in the 141 migrants stranded on board the Aquarius rescue ship, hailing a ‘Franco-Maltese initiative’.
Aquarius migrant ship stranded after rejection from EU ports
The rescue vessel, which was stuck at sea for five days after being barred from several ports, finally received permission to dock in Malta on Wednesday.
Mr Descrozaille, a member of Mr Macron’s Republic on the Move party, said that the groundwork for the migrant-sharing deal had been laid by “France and Malta”.
“There is no national solution to the [migrant] problem. We must absolutely favour European co-operation, which is what has been done with the new migrant-sharing deal, at the initiative of the president of the Republic, for that matter,” he told France Info radio.
“What is important here is that a European solution has been found,” the centrist MP continued.
If the closest ports are closed, then others that are closer need to open
Mr Macron, for his part, said in a statement that the decision had been made in a “context of humanitarian emergency,” and “highlights the importance of having a lasting and sustainable mechanism to avoid the repetition of crises”.
The Mediterranean rescue vessel was given the green light to dock at the Valletta harbour in Malta after France, Spain, Germany, Portugal and Luxembourg agreed to take in the ship’s passengers, ending a five-day tug-of-war among European countries.
France will take 60 migrants, Spain another 60, Germany 50, Portugal 30 and Luxembourg five. Fifty will remain in Malta.
Malta initially refused to welcome the Aquarius in a repeat of the stand-off seen in June, when the Aquarius was at the centre of a heated diplomatic row between EU leaders until Spain offered it safe harbour.
The Maltese government backtracked on its decision when the deal was struck on Tuesday.
But despite being hailed as a dealmaker by his allies, Mr Macron has been bitterly criticised by his left-wing opponents for failing to offer the Aquarius a safe haven.
The Macron administration, for its part, has repeatedly argued that France is not the nearest port, and therefore not the safest port for the migrant ship to dock.
“If the closest ports are closed, then others that are closer need to open,” Jean-Guy Talamoni, the head of the Corsican national assembly, told the news channel BFM TV on Tuesday.
Mr Talamoni, who was one of the first to offer to take in the Aquarius migrants, penned an open letter published by France Info on Wednesday in which he called for the Mediterranean to remain a “zone of peace”.
In the letter signed by 17 Corsican officials, including regional council chief Gilles Simeoni, Mr Talamoni shone a spotlight on the growing unease over migration in the bloc, and urged EU leaders to “implement without delay a true common migrant policy”.
“We believe fundamentally in a Mediterranean which is a zone of peace…and of economic development, and not a hotbed of conflict,” he wrote.
Until this summer Italy was the main landing point for African migrants crossing the Mediterranean in search of a better life in Europe. But Italy’s new populist government has forcibly reversed this trend by barring rescue ships from docking at its ports.