Tuesday, 12 June 2018

Italy’s Matteo Salvini refuses to let a boat full of migrants land

Marine Le Pen reacted with delight, the Vatican with dismay. But it is clear that by closing his country’s ports to a ship loaded with rescued migrants, Italy’s interior minister and deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, has notched up a significant, if intensely controversial, vote-winner for the new populist government in Rome.

On June 11th the new Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, invited the MS Aquarius, a rescue vessel operated by a French NGO, to dock at Valencia after it had been refused entry to Italy, resolving the immediate problem. The Aquarius is carrying around 629 people plucked from the sea off the coast of Libya.

Ms Le Pen, leader of the hard-right National Rally (previously the National Front), welcomed Mr Salvini’s veto, saying that only “a policy of firmness” would halt the mass arrival of migrants. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the Vatican’s equivalent of a culture minister, tweeted from the gospel of the interior minister’s...Continue reading

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