French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne called on Wednesday for an extraordinary summit of interior ministers in Brussels on migration after the French government agreed to the disembarkation in the port of Toulon of the ship ‘Ocean Viking’, with more than 200 people on board.
Borne has encouraged to strengthen the maritime capacities of the countries of origin, as well as to have a «greater efficiency» in the procedures of readmission of irregular migrants, as reported by the television channel Public Senat.
At the same time, she was in favor of a «more fluid and transparent» cooperation between the public authorities and the organizations, while at the same time she specified that she expects «the resumption of the work of the NGOs involved in the rescue» of migrants at sea.
Borne has urged to «advance as far as possible» in the «finalization» of the Pact on Migration and Asylum within the European Union. «We hope that an agreement can be reached quickly with the European Parliament on these issues,» he has indicated.
This comes after Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin warned that the Gallic government would sift the needs of the 234 migrants on board the ‘Ocean Viking’. In doing so, he confirmed that almost 19 percent of the migrants would be expelled once their state of health was stabilized.
The figure is not definitive, but would imply that there would eventually be fewer than 200 migrants and refugees to be divided among a total of twelve European countries. France has pledged to take in a third, while Germany will take in the same proportion.
According to the minister, they acted out of «humanism», after the NGO warned of the risk to the lives of all migrants if they did not receive permission to dock in a safe port following the refusal of the Italian government of Giorgia Meloni. Three weeks passed between the first rescues and the moment when the ‘Ocean Viking’ arrived in the south of France.
