‘Send the "boat people" around Europe’

Published on 12 August 2013 at 10:37

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Faced with massive arrivals of migrants by boat – 1,294 since the beginning of the year – Malta is calling on the European Union to show solidarity and take in some of the arrivals.
In early August, Valletta refused to help a tanker with 102 migrants on board, explains Austrian daily Die Presse:

despite reprimands from the European Commissioner for External Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, Malta has maintained a hard line. [...] The Prime Minister has explained that Southern Europe deserves greater solidarity and the other countries must also absorb the new arrivals. If Germany were to take charge of a number of migrants proportional to the number taken on by Malta, nearly a million people would be concerned. This incident shows that in 2013 the EU has not found a solution to the distribution of the ‘boat people’. [...] A review of EU legislation is thus necessary.

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