Italy and Austria are cooperating to come up with a plan to process refugees on ships. Namely, Austria’s interior minister said that asylum-seekers would be looked after. In the meantime, both countries are trying to reduce immigration influx in their countries.
Specifically, Austria and Italy supported a proposal according to which, rescued refugees aboard ships in the Mediterranean will be held until their asylum claims were processed.
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Since migrant influx from Turkey to Greece were largely shut in 2016, migrants have been choosing Italy. However, the Italian government has made shutting down the route a policy priority.
For its part Austria promised to prevent another influx and has been trying to restrict border crossings from Italy.
However, according to the Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska and EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, landing platforms is not supported by the African participants.
Speaking about his opinions on migration, Matteo Salvini, Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, said that the government encourages Italians to have children ‘and not to uproot the best of Africa’s young people’.
Foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn, opposed to this statement and replied that Luxembourg has ‘dozens of thousands of Italians. They came as migrants, and worked in Luxembourg’.
