The Norwegian Foreign Ministry announced yesterday, Saturday, that the Scandinavian country will take in 20 of the migrants rescued by the Ocean Viking ship after they disembarked in France, since Italy did not allow it to dock.
The Ocean Viking, a ship carrying out search and rescue operations chartered by a French non-governmental organization, had rescued 234 migrants off the Libyan coast; It was then forced to wait for weeks for its crew to be assigned a safe port to disembark them.
After repeatedly requesting permission from the Italian authorities to dock, the Ocean Viking finally sailed to Toulon (southern France) in early November, following a decision announced by the French government as an «exceptional measure.’.».
About forty minors were handed over to French welfare services. 189 adults were taken to detention centers to assess whether they were eligible for asylum, a French Interior Ministry official said on Friday.
The 123 did not provide sufficient evidence to support their claims for asylum and are expected to be deported, according to the same source.
Another 66 adults will be transferred to eleven EU member states, including Germany, Finland, and Portugal. Norway, although not an EU member state, announced yesterday that it will take in twenty.
«The government took this exceptional decision following a request from France to assist it in a difficult situation,» a Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesperson explained in an email to Agence France-Presse.
The spokesperson added that there is a strong possibility that the migrants Norway will receive will «meet the criteria for obtaining refugee status.».
The standoff between France and Italy has reignited the debate on immigration in Europe and heightened tensions between the French government and the new far-right coalition government led by Giorgia Meloni.
Under international maritime law, ships in distress must be able to dock at the nearest port, which means that Italy, due to its geography, receives 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 nearly 90,000 migrants since the beginning of the year. They stressed that their refusal to allow the Ocean Viking to dock was intended to send a message to the EU that a new system for redistributing migrants among member states is urgently needed.
