The 47 migrants stranded on a charity rescue boat off the coast of Sicily will be allowed to land in Italy only if they are immediately transferred to Germany or the Netherlands, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said Tuesday.
The Sea-Watch 3, a Dutch-registered vessel run by the German non-governmental organization (NGO) Sea-Watch, rescued the migrants north of the Libyan port of Zuwarah on January 19. It entered Italian waters on Friday to seek shelter from rough seas.
"Disembarking the migrants? Only if they will go on to the Netherlands, which gave a flag to the Sea-Watch, or Germany, the NGO's state. In Italy we have already welcomed, and spent too much [on migrants]," Salvini tweeted.
The Sea-Watch is anchored about 2 kilometers off Syracuse, in eastern Sicily. Opposition lawmakers are taking turns into boarding on the boat to check conditions aboard, and to appeal for the migrants to be let off the boat.
To unblock the stalemate, Sea-Watch has lodged an urgent complaint before the European Court of Human Rights. The Italian prime minister's office said Monday it would argue before the court that it is up to the Netherlands to deal with the NGO ship and its migrants.
Since June, when Italy's populist government took office and started turning away NGO vessels, migrants rescued from the Mediterranean have repeatedly been trapped in intra-EU rows about where they should be allowed to land.