Italy: Catholic church, Albania, Ireland to take migrants
ROME — Catholic bishops, tiny Albania and Ireland agreed to take the 140 migrants blocked aboard an Italian coast guard vessel, Premier Giuseppe Conte said Saturday, announcing the end of 10-day standoff over the asylum-seekers but making clear an angry Italy could avenge a perceived lack of overall European Union solidarity by refusing to approve the bloc’s next multi-year budget.
“Italy must take note that the ‘spirit of solidarity is struggling to translate into concrete acts,” Conte said in a statement. Conte referred to declarations made at an EU summit in late June promising to help Italy and other Mediterranean countries deal with the burden of migrants rescued from human traffickers’ unseaworthy boats.
In his role as head of a nearly three-month-old populist coalition government, Conte said Italy under current conditions “doesn’t consider it possible to express adhesion to a proposed budget that underpins a policy so incoherent on the social level.”
Earlier in the week, some in the government threatened to withhold nearly 20 billion euros ($23 billion) in contributions to the EU if member nations didn’t volunteer to take the last group of rescued migrants reaching Italy. Brussels sharply reminded Italy it was legally obliged to pay.