Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said on Thursday that six EU countries had agreed to take in some 150 migrants from a rescue ship that Italy had blocked from docking, resolving the latest standoff over immigration to Europe across the Mediterranean.
ITALIAN INTERIOR MINISTER HAD REFUSED TO TAKE THEM IN
The migrants have been stranded on the Spanish charity ship Open Arms since it picked them up off Libya in early August, and Rome’s far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, refused to allow them to disembark.
The migrants will be shared out among France, Germany, Romania, Portugal, Spain and Luxembourg, Conte said in an open letter to Salvini in which he accused the minister of disloyalty and being “obsessed” with closing Italy’s ports to migrants.
The Open Arms, operated by a Spanish charity of the same name, was in Italian territorial waters on Thursday, a day after a Rome administrative court gave it leave to enter them, countermanding Salvini’s ban.