The Commission said on Tuesday 11 May that it had “not yet received” proposals for specific aid from Member States to relocate the thousands of people who have arrived in Lampedusa in recent days. On 10 May, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, called for “solidarity” with Italy.
More than 2,000 people have arrived since the weekend from Libya, according to local authorities.
Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has put the issue on the agenda of a forthcoming Council of Ministers meeting, while the Italian press reported on 11 May that the Italian government plans to ask the EU to pay Libya to prevent the departure of migrants, similar to the EU-Turkey agreement of March 2016.
However, the Prime Minister’s office denied this information later in the day.
Pact is “unworkable”
The NGO EuromedRights, for its part, published a study on 11 May in which it estimates that the new ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’ would require Spain, Italy and Greece to “multiply current detention capacities by 6, 7 and 34 times respectively” to implement the new obligations. “The proposed European Pact on Migration solves nothing and is simply unworkable”.
Analysing the data on arrivals in 2020, the report shows that Spain and Italy would have to increase their number of formal and informal detention centres by a factor of 6 and 7 respectively, if the EU Pact rules were implemented. According to these rules, in a crisis situation similar to that of 2015, Greece would have to multiply its detention centres by 34.
In 2015, Italy and Greece were only able to relocate one third of the total number envisaged. “This scenario could therefore worsen with the introduction, under the concept of ‘solidarity’, of return sponsorships and support for outsourcing policies as an alternative to relocation”, the NGO adds.
Meeting in Portugal on migration partnerships with third countries
On the same day, a ministerial conference was held in Lisbon with North African and African countries (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia) to discuss future advanced migration partnerships.
At a joint press conference, Portuguese Interior Minister Eduardo Cabrita and Commissioner Ylva Johansson underlined the added value of such cooperation with countries of origin or transit and the need both to combat the traffickers who fuel dangerous crossings to the EU and to develop legal channels.
The Commissioner is due to present an anti-trafficking action plan in the near future, she said at the press briefing. She is also expected to soon launch ‘talent partnerships’ which aim to develop legal labour migration programmes with these countries of origin and transit.
Link to the Euromedrights report: https://bit.ly/33vE5Il (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)