On 23 August, European Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, welcomed the solution found on the same day by Malta and six other European countries to allow the 356 migrants from the Norwegian-flagged vessel Ocean Viking to disembark.
These people had been waiting for a solution for two weeks. Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat announced that they would be relocated to several countries and that none would remain in Malta.
The countries volunteering to host these migrants are France, Germany, Portugal, Luxembourg, Romania and Ireland, Avramopoulos said on his Twitter account. For the Commissioner, Malta's action, which was supposed to disembark the migrants within a day, is an example of “concrete solidarity”. France reported accepting 150 of these 356 migrants onto its soil.
In September, European Interior Ministers will be in Malta to continue the discussions initiated in July in Helsinki and Paris on temporary mechanisms for disembarkation of migrants, although the exact date is not yet known.
According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which published new figures on 23 August, 45,505 people arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean in 2019 and 859 deaths were recorded, compared to 1,558 over the same period in 2018. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)