ROME: Italy stepped up pressure on Wednesday on fellow EU nations to open their ports to migrants rescued by humanitarian ships as political tension simmers in the Italian government’s coalition over a sharply rising number of arrivals this summer on the country’s southern shores.

The office of Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese said she had a long telephone conversation with the European Union’s internal affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson.

Political and economic crises in Tunisia are feeding steadily increasing streams of migrants determined to reach Europe, many of whom set out in smugglers’ boats from Libyan shores. The Italian interior ministry’s statement said those factors figured in Lamorgese’s request for an urgent change of direction in the interventions of the Union’s migratory policy.

In May and June, the number of migrants who reached Italian shores more than tripled compared to the previous year’s figure, according to the ministry’s count. In July, the year-to-year difference was less marked 8,600 in 2021 compared to 7,000 in 2020. But so far August has seen charity boats carrying the flags of France and Germany rescue hundreds of migrants from unseaworthy boats launched by human traffickers.

Currently some 800 rescued passengers are aboard charity vessels waiting permission from Italy or Malta to enter a safe port. Hundreds more in recent days, including from Tunisia, have reached Sardinia or the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa unaided. The island’s residence for newly arrived migrants seeking asylum hold some 250 people, but repeatedly, the number of occupants has swelled beyond 1,000.

Italy on Wednesday requested immediate, even temporary, activation of a mechanism that involves the member states to allow for docking that is safe and compatible with anti-Covid-19 measures, to NGO ships flying European banners” and which are carrying out search-and-rescue operations in international waters, the ministry said.

Right-wing leader Matteo Salvini, whose anti-migrant League party, is a prominent partner in Premier Mario Draghi’s coalition, has been increasingly forceful in his criticism of Italy’s management of migration.

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2021