Brussels, 30/03/2011 (Agence Europe) - The head of the Italian government, Silvio Berlusconi, visited the island of Lampedusa on Wednesday 30 March. During the course of the day, around 6,000 mainly Tunisian migrants squeezed onto this tiny island in horrendous sanitary conditions, were expected to be evacuated, according to AFP. On Wednesday the Italian minister for home affairs, Roberto Maroni, provided assurances that “the situation on the island will be sorted out”. Berlusconi is also expected to announce measures for awarding damages to Lampedusa, which mainly lives off tourism.
Five ships for transporting several thousand passengers were expected to land on the island to transfer the illegal immigrants towards reception centres in southern Italy. So far, 6000 migrants are living on Lampedusa, which only has a population of 5,000 people. The European Commission is regularly accused by the Italian authorities of not providing sufficient assistance to Italy. On Wednesday, the Commission again underlined the action it was taking, especially the funding it provided. It emphasised that Italy had three European funds programmes on migration available to it, which were worth €80 million for the period 2010-2011. The spokesman for Commissioner Cecilia Malmström indicated that €6.9 million of this funding was for managing the return of migrants. The Commission also pointed out that an emergency fund existed for member states, to the tune of €25 million but that no request for activating these emergency funds had been made by the Italian authorities yet. (S.P./transl.fl)