European Commission Welcomes Italy's Decision Letting Migrants Disembark On Sicily

BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 26th August, 2018) Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship, welcomed the Italian authorities decision to allow over 100 migrants disembark the Diciotti vessel in Sicily.

The vessel was allowed to drop off 137 migrants in Sicily's Catania port late on Saturday after it had been stranded in the Mediterranean for days.

"I welcome that a solution has been found and that all migrants have disembarked from the Diciotti - thanks to solidarity across borders and communities. But we cannot always wait for this type of goodwill solidarity. We need to have structural measures - starting from the EU," Avramopoulos wrote on Twitter.

On August 15, the Italian Coast Guard rescued 177 migrants and took them on board Diciotti. Since neither Maltese nor Italian authorities agreed to allow migrants to disembark in their ports, the ship was forced to remain at sea until 27 unaccompanied children and 27 sick people were allowed to leave the vessel in Italy earlier this week.

On Saturday, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini said that Albania, Ireland and the Italian Episcopal Conference agreed to host the migrants from the Diciotti ship.

The European Union has been facing an acute migration crisis since 2015 when hundreds of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers arrived in Europe from Northern Africa and the middle East. Despite the financial support granted by the European Union, Italy has been one of the states that were hit the most by the influx of migrants.

The countrys new government, which came to power as a result of the March election, has been seeking to close the Italian borders to migrants.

In several high-profile cases earlier this year, the government already denied several rescue vessels with hundreds of migrants on board permission to dock. Rome has been criticizing Brussels over its failure to settle this issue on the EU level.