Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi gesturing after he delivered his speech at the Italian Parliament in Rome, yesterday. Photo: Remo Casilli/ReutersItalian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi yesterday said Europe must take responsibility for rescuing boat migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea from Africa by making a “significant investment” in the region’s border control agency, Frontex.
“A Europe that tells the Calabrian fisherman that he must use a certain technique to catch tuna but then turns its back when there are dead bodies in the sea cannot call itself civilised,” Renzi said in Parliament.
Italy’s navy and coast guard have been patrolling the waters between Africa and the Italian island of Sicily since October, when 366 people drowned after their boat capsized just a mile from the Italian island of Lampedusa.
That tragedy focused world attention on the desperate risks taken by many migrants, whose plight has been highlighted by human rights groups and Pope Francis.
Italy’s Mare Nostrum, or “Our Sea”, navy mission costs about €9 million per month, and more than 50,000 migrants have been rescued so far this year. Many are refugees fleeing civil war in Syria or forced military service in Eritrea.
The 39-year-old Renzi, who will attend a summit in Brussels tomorrow and Friday and takes over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU next week, is trying to get member states to recognise that Mare Nostrum is in fact a European border issue, and not only an Italian one.
“If, when facing the tragedies of immi-gration, we are told, ‘This is not our problem,’ then I say keep your single currency and leave us our values,” the prime minister said.
Though about two-thirds of those who are rescued move on quickly to other EU countries, member states have offered Italy little help with Mare Nostrum, and Frontex has provided only limited air surveillance.
Without stronger collective EU action, this summer could become the Mediterranean’s drowning season
Italy – along with Spain, Greece and Malta – have been left mostly on their own to manage the growing number of migrants who seek to enter the EU in boats departing from North Africa, partly because increasing anti-immigrant sentiment in countries like Britain and France makes it unpopular to help out.
“Without stronger collective EU action, this summer could become the Mediterranean’s drowning season,” Benjamin Ward, deputy director at Human Rights Watch, said yesterday in a statement.
“EU leaders should give the financial and material backing to continue Italy’s vital efforts to save lives at sea and ensure that those who are rescued land at a safe place and can have any asylum claims fairly heard,” he said.
Renzi yesterday also called for a change of course in Europe, saying austerity policies on their own could not guarantee fiscal stability as unemployment rises and economies stagnate.
Speaking in Parliament ahead of this week’s European Union summit, Renzi said Italy was not asking for a relaxation of EU budget rules but for existing rules to be flexibly applied in exchange for a three-year programme of structural reforms.
“It is obvious that the trade-off between the reform process and the use of the margins for flexibility which already exist and which are available to member states is what has always happened,” he said.
Renzi said that when Italy takes over the EU’s six-month rotating presidency next month, he would outline a “1,000 day” programme for which he would seek parliamentary approval and that would be achieved by May 2017.
Speaking as leader of a country whose economy has not grown for more than a decade and which has more than 40 per cent youth unemployment and massive debts, Renzi said the “high priests” of austerity risked condemning Europe to stagnation.