On Thursday 22 June, the delegation from the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) will conclude a two-day visit to Lampedusa in Sicily, where it assessed the island’s reception capacity and search and rescue capabilities at sea off Sicily.
The chair of the LIBE committee, Spain’s Juan Fernando López Aguilar (S&D), was accompanied on this mission by Pietro Bartolo (S&D, Italian), Sylvie Guillaume (S&D, French), Cornelia Ernst (The Left, German), Nadine Morano (EPP, French), Yana Toom (Renew Europe, Estonian), Laura Ferrara (Non-attached Member, Italian), Karlo Ressler (EPP, Croatian), Alessandra Mussolini (EPP, Italian), Giuseppe Milazzo (ECR, Italian) and Annalisa Tardino (ID, Italian), assured the island of the EU’s solidarity at a press briefing on Wednesday 21 June.
Reiterating on several occasions that migration is not a matter for the Member States, but for the European Union as a whole, and that Lampedusa is not alone, Mr López Aguilar also promised that this mission, which included visits to hotspots and meetings with NGOs, would feed into the work on the ‘Asylum and Migration Pact’, which he hopes to see concluded as soon as possible.
The mission was marked by controversy over the organisation of certain meetings and press conferences by the Spanish MEP, and the fact that he did not take part in a meeting with the mayor of Lampedusa, Filippo Mannino, of the ‘Five Star’ party, with the Parliament’s ECR group reporting this controversy.
Questioned on the subject, the President of LIBE felt that “Lampedusa deserves a better response” than it has received to date.
“We met the mayor of Lampedusa, who insists on the need to obtain European support for these places of first entry. Concrete action is needed to help them, independently of the ‘Asylum and Migration Pact’”, commented Sylvie Guillaume on Twitter.
Italy has seen more than 100,000 people arrive on its shores since the start of the year. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)