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49 migrants on Sea-Eye and Sea-Watch 3 disembarked in Malta
On 9 January 49 migrants disembarked in Malta after two weeks of negotiations between European governments. The 49 people rescued by vessels of the NGOs Sea-Watch 3 and Sea-Eye were standing blocked in front of the Maltese coasts because neither Malta nor Italy gave them the permission to enter in their ports. In the end, some European Member States found an agreement: the 49 asylum seekers will be welcomed by Germany, France, Portugal, Ireland, Romania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy and Malta. The EU migration, home affairs and citizenship commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, expressed his satisfaction for the achieved agreement despite having admitted that “the past weeks have not been Europe’s finest hour”. The Italian government’s position remains ambiguous: the Italian PM Giuseppe Conte finally endorsed the agreement despite previous statement of Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of Interior Matteo Salvini declaring that Italy would not allow the arrival of these migrants. This development is yet another reminder of the necessity to clarify EU’s policy framework vis-à-vis asylum seekers and to revise the Dublin regulation, which has not materialized yet because of divisions among member states.
- The Euromed news are edited by the team of the Euro-Mediterranean Policies Department of the European Institute of the Mediterranean -