The 230 migrants still aboard the Ocean Viking will be able to disembark tomorrow Friday at the military port of Toulon, in the south of France, and end their three-week odyssey wandering the Mediterranean. It was announced this Thursday by the French Interior Minister, Gérald Darmanin, who has said that it is an "exceptional" measure and has harshly criticized Italy for refusing to host the ship of the humanitarian organization SOS Méditerranée.
The outcome of this crisis represents a political victory for the new Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni -at the head of a coalition of right and extreme right-, who has stood firm in the case of the Ocean Viking. This serious disagreement between Rome and Paris anticipates other problems in the future in the management of the migratory flow.
Before Darmanin's announcement, four passengers from the humanitarian rescue ship were evacuated by helicopter to a hospital in Bastia, on the island of Corsica. They were three who were seriously ill and a companion. According to the minister, a third of the migrants arriving in Toulon will be relocated to France after passing controls. It is assumed that among them will be the more than fifty minors on board.
Darmanin, who spoke to the press after the Council of Ministers, denounced Italy's "incomprehensible" and "unacceptable" attitude. As a retaliatory measure, he said that France was suspending the reception of 3,500 migrants who are now in Italy and who had to be transferred to French territory.
For days the French authorities, including President Macron, seemed paralyzed and hesitated about what to do with the Ocean Viking so as not to create a precedent. In Italy, which for years has had to deal with the rescue at sea and the reception of hundreds of thousands of migrants - sometimes several thousand arriving in a single day - they complain about the lack of European solidarity. The case of France was especially flagrant when the crisis worsened, with the massive arrivals on Lampedusa and the Sicilian coast of small boats from Tunisia and Libya. Italy launched the Mare Nostrum operation. Some European countries, such as Spain, Germany or Norway, sent warships or tugboats to help the Italian Coast Guard and Navy, but a French ship or any offer to host migrants was never seen in Corsica, for example. At that time the president was the socialist François Hollande.
