Germany accuses Italy of sabotaging migrant sea-rescue mission

Berlin suspended the deployment of a naval vessel in the EU’s Sophia mission, which has rescued scores of refugees

The German frigate 'Augsburg' stationed off the coast of Libya during Operation Sophia, the forerunner to Operation Irini, in 2019 EPA

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s defence minister accused Italy of sabotaging a migration rescue mission in the central Mediterranean Sea, sharply escalating a dispute between Berlin and Rome’s populist government.

Germany on Tuesday abruptly suspended the deployment of a naval vessel in the European Union’s Sophia mission, which has rescued scores of refugees. On Wednesday, Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, speaking on the margins of the World Economic Forum, said Sophia’s Italian commanders had diverted German naval forces away from sea-rescue activity.

“The Italian command has sent our navy to the most far-flung corners of the Mediterranean Sea over the past nine months, where there are no smuggling routes and no routes for refugees,” Ms von der Leyen told reporters in Davos, Switzerland. The German deployment “has had no sensible tasks for months”,

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Matteo Salvini bashes France over Libya role in new diplomatic spat

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At the heart of the flare-up is Italy’s refusal to allow asylum seekers into its ports, a decision that has upended EU efforts, spearheaded by Mrs Merkel, to share the burden of taking in migrants. The move comes as Matteo Salvini, the Italian deputy prime minister leading the country’s anti-migration turn and the head of the far-right League, ramps up his assault on the European establishment.

German forces have rescued 22,000 refugees in the Mediterranean since the mission began in 2015, according to Ms von der Leyen. About 2,275 migrants were estimated to have died or gone missing in 2018, according to data compiled by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

“If Germany leaves the mission, it’s not a problem for me,” Mr Salvini said in an interview with Rai 1 radio station earlier in the day as reports of Germany’s decision came through. “All the migrants are arriving in Italy anyway.”

The spectacle of a maritime dispute between two large EU members compounded an already tense entanglement between Italy and France. Mr Salvini predicted in the interview that he would have “new counterparts” in Paris or even Berlin after the European elections in May. He also took a swipe at French President Emmanuel Macron.

“It seems to me that Macron has his issues with millions of French to whom he made promises and did not deliver,” Mr Salvini said. “Merkel is weak.”

Mr Salvini and his coalition partner-cum-rival, Luigi Di Maio of Italy’s Five Star Movement, are competing for support in May’s European Parliamentary elections as evidence grows that their confrontational style is hurting the Italian economy. The Bank of Italy has cut its growth forecasts and signalled that the euro region’s third-biggest economy might have slipped into recession at the end of 2018.

Earlier this week, the French government summoned the Italian ambassador after Mr Di Maio said that France “never stopped colonising Africa” and was contributing to the waves of migration by holding back Africa’s economic growth.

Germany will remain in support of Sophia, whose mission is to fight illegal trafficking of migrants and train the Libyan coastguard, Ms von der Leyen said, but the vessel that was to deploy in February will remain on exercise in the North Sea. Germany will wait until Sophia’s mission is clarified on the EU level, she said.

“We can be back down in the Mediterranean within 10 days at any time,” Mrs Merkel’s defence minister said. EU leaders will have to extend the mission beyond March 31, the ministry said earlier.

Meanwhile, Italian authorities begun transferring migrants from a reception centre outside of Rome on Wednesday in the first concrete application of controversial legislation sought by Mr Salvini to crack down on migration.

Castelnuovo di Porto mayor Riccardo Travaglini told SkyTG24 the closure of the centre “interrupted a process of integration that was under way” for hundreds living at the centre slated for closure. Some 350 migrants are being moved out of the centre over five days.

Advocates for the migrants say that some who had won the right to humanitarian protection have lost the right to have a place to stay under the new law. The mayor told Sky that he had given a room in his house to a young woman who was being displaced by authorities enacting the legislation