After unsuccessfully asking the Italian authorities for permission to dock for some time, the Ocean Viking finally went to Toulon (southern France) in early November.
The Norwegian Foreign Ministry announced on Saturday that the Scandinavian country will welcome 20 of the migrants rescued by the Ocean Viking after they disembarked in France after Italy refused to allow it to dock.
The Ocean Viking, a search and rescue ship chartered by a French non-governmental organization, picked up 234 migrants at sea off the Libyan coast, then had to wait weeks for its crew to be shown a safe port to disembark.
After unsuccessfully asking the Italian authorities for permission to dock for some time, the Ocean Viking finally went to Toulon (southern France) in early November, as part of a decision that the French government announced it received “exceptionally”.
About forty minors were handed over to the French welfare services. 189 adults were taken to detention centers to assess their eligibility for asylum, a French interior ministry official said on Friday.
The 123 did not submit sufficient evidence to support their claims for asylum and are expected to be deported, according to the same source.
A further 66 adults will be transferred to eleven EU member states, including Germany, Finland and Portugal. Norway, although not a member state of the EU, announced yesterday that it will welcome twenty.
“The government took this extraordinary decision following a request it received from France to help it in a difficult situation,” a Norwegian foreign ministry spokesman explained in an email to AFP.
The spokeswoman added that the immigrants that Norway will accept there are serious chances “to fulfill the criteria to obtain refugee status”.
The bravo between France and Italy reignited the debate in Europe on immigration and raised tensions between the French government and the new far-right coalition government led by Giorgia Meloni.
Under the international law of the sea, ships in danger must be able to dock at the nearest port, which means that Italy receives, due to its geography, a much larger number of refugees and migrants departing from the coast of North Africa.
Italian authorities pointed out this week that the country has welcomed almost 90,000 migrants since the start of the year. They emphasized that their refusal to allow the Ocean Viking to dock was intended to send a message to the EU, in order to realize that a new system of redistribution of migrants to the member states is urgently needed.
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