Italy’s firebrand Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has threatened to return migrants caught at sea to Libya – a move potentially in breach of international law.
The threat came on the fourth day of a stand-off over 177 migrants picked up by the Italian coastguard in Maltese search and rescue waters.
Both Malta and Italy are refusing to take in the migrants.
The Italian government, made up of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement and Salvini’s far-right League, has pledged to crack down on migration, even though flows are now lower than in the past.
Italy has seen more than 650,000 arrivals on its shores since 2014.
Unless the EU steps in to help, “we will be forced to do what will stop the business of traffickers for good. That is, escorting back to a Libyan port the people caught at sea”, Salvini said in a statement.
The European Union and the United Nations have repeatedly stated that returning sea migrants to Libya – where they face the risk of abuse and torture – would be illegal.
The Diciotti, an Italian coastguard unit, rescued 190 people on Thursday, but 13 people needing urgent medical assistance were evacuated on the same day to the Italian island of Lampedusa.
The Italian government then asked Malta to take the remaining 177 passengers, allowing the Diciotti to dock at one of its ports.
Permission for the vessel to dock in Malta was refused.
Malta’s behaviour is “unspeakable” and “worthy of sanctions”, Italian Infrastructure and Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli wrote on Twitter yesterday.
The EU needs to “step forward” and allow for the migrants to be redistributed across several EU nations, Toninelli said, “otherwise [the EU] has no reason to exist”.
A European Commission spokeswoman said that the EU’s executive had no comment beyond Friday’s remarks, stating the commission is “ready to lend our full diplomatic weight to swift resolutions”.
Malta Home Affairs Minister Micheal Farruggia replied to Italy via Twitter, saying that “the only definitive solution is to disembark [the migrants] in #Lampedusa or in [another] Italian port”.
Farruggia acknowledged that the Italians rescued the migrants in Maltese waters, “but only to prevent them from entering Italian waters”.
“They are now on board a military vessel, which practically means on Italian soil. I expect that Italy would ask other EU states to help, it is up to them, but Malta followed international law,” Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said yesterday in a radio interview.
Meanwhile, Muscat said he would deport to Italy some 120 migrants found living in inhumane conditions on a former cattle farm in Malta.
“They arrived in Italy, were not able to find work in Italy, so they came to Malta. They arrived with bags holding airplane tags from particular areas in Italy,” Muscat told broadcaster One Radio.
Italy and Malta – the EU countries closest to Libya, a sea migration hotspot – are at loggerheads over who should assume responsibility for those who risk the nautical crossing from North Africa.
Tensions have spiked just as the flow of migrants has ebbed: EU border agency Frontex reported that sea crossings in the central Mediterranean fell, year-on-year, by 81% for the period between January and July.
Italy’s long-standing practice of taking in practically all those who are rescued south of Sicily ended in June, when the populist, eurosceptic government took office.
On several occasions, rescue vessels operated by non-governmental organisations were forced to spend several days at sea before making detours to Malta or Spain, as Italy closed its ports to them.
Salvini also tried to block EU navy ships and Italian coastguard units from taking rescued migrants to Italian ports, but was overruled on the issue.
In some cases, rescue boats remained at sea for days and were offered port docking only after groups of EU countries agreed on a voluntary basis to share incoming migrants among them.
In June, Malta was forced to take the German NGO boat Lifeline carrying over 234 migrants, just days after a standoff between the island nation and Italy led to the French rescue ship Aquarius being diverted and taking 630 people to Spain.
There are no fixed rules for such burden-sharing, which ends up being negotiated on a case-by-case basis.
Italy has repeatedly called on the EU to take a co-ordinating role in such situations.


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