Lampedusa mayor calls for tangible European solidarity

Europe has to “wake up” and “get going” to share the burden of irregular migration, according to Lampedusa Mayor Bernardino de Rubes.

Contacted by The Times yesterday, the mayor of the Italian island, which has seen thousands of migrants flock to its shores in the past two months, said the EU had to stop being “parasitic” and start showing solidarity.

“Italy bore all the brunt of the migrations, now it seems that Malta is having its share. It’s an international problem; it can’t be limited just to Malta and Italy. Europe has to respond, and I think it will do so in the coming days,” Mr de Rubes said.

Asked what he thought of Malta’s appeal for an EU-wide emergency mechanism that made burden sharing obligatory, the mayor said he hoped “Europe responds to this humanitarian emergency, considering the 23,000 migrants from Tunisia that landed on Lampedusa and the departures of Eritreans, Somalians from Libya who might be asking for political asylum.”

“Europe has to respond to these cries of help which these countries are issuing,” the mayor said.

Last week, 800 migrants from Libya landed in Malta in the space of 24 hours.

The small island is the closest European territory to Tunisia, and the migrants who arrived there in the previous months are being transferred to other Italian regions after Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi paid a visit to the island last week.

“Berlusconi promised us the island would be cleared within three days; this didn’t happen because of the bad weather. This morning, now that the weather is better, three boats have arrived on one side, on the other we have ships leaving,” the mayor said.

The migrants are expected to be transferred in anticipation of today’s meeting between Mr Berlusconi and Interior Minister Roberto Maroni and the Tunisian government.

On Saturday and Sunday, over 2,000 migrants left the island for the mainland, while military vessels patrolled the coastline.

The mood has lifted in the small island, as for the past two months, residents have had to put up with about 6,000 migrants roaming the streets, living in “inhumane conditions, without a roof on their head”.

“We see the Tunisia case as being almost solved, with boat patrols round Tunis, but on the other hand, we have to see what happens on the Libyan front,” the mayor says.

Now, the island, whose main industry is tourism, is looking forward to the summer season. “Our industry is tourism, not immigration,” Mr de Rubes said.