Spain unhappy with Malta handling of migrants
The 26 shipwrecked Africans saved by a Spanish trawler earlier this week have arrived safely in Spain after fellow EU-country Malta refused to allow them on land, with Spain openly criticising the Maltese decision.
"The attitude of the Maltese authorities in this issue was not correct at all," the Spanish employment and social affairs minister Jesus Caldera told Spanish journalists in Brussels.
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"Here we were not speaking of taking in illegal immigrants but of saving lives. Spain did its duty but Malta did not act correctly in this case," he said, according to the Times of Malta.
The Mediterranean Sea is divided into areas where different states are responsible for the search and rescue of persons in need. The 26 Africans were rescued in an area of Libyan responsibility, according to the Maltese authorities.
"They were found in a Libyan search area and were rescued by a Spanish boat. We have no obligation to accept them in international law," Maltese interior minister Tonio Borg said, AFP reports.
Under EU rules, the country where the immigrants disembark become responsible for determining whether some or any are entitled to asylum within the union.
Mr Caldera called on the EU to define guidelines on who should assume responsibility in similar cases. "Spain wants a definite set of rules on what should happen in these circumstances. We cannot have countries that do not carry out their duties and pass on the responsibility to others," he said.
"Everybody acknowledges that there is a big problem," said European Commission spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing.
He explained that UN rules on maritime law were not clear enough and should be complemented by EU guidelines, adding that EU justice and home affairs commissioner Franco Frattini was "very much committed" to getting guidelines adopted.
Eleven south EU member states and northern African countries are meeting in Greece on Friday (1 June) to discuss European immigration policy and how to crack down on Mediterranean human-traffickers.
Last year, 51 immigrants rescued by a Spanish trawler off the Libyan coast were forced to remain onboard for more than a week due to a dispute between Malta and several other Mediterranean countries denying them entrance.
They were in the end temporarily accommodated by Andorra, Italy, Malta and Spain.
Only last week 27 shipwrecked Africans spent three days clinging to tuna nets in the Mediterranean while Malta and Libya, which is not an EU member, argued over who should rescue them. They were picked up by the Italian navy.
Another 57 African immigrants were not so lucky. They were spotted shipwrecked by a Maltese air patrol, which took pictures of them. But by the time help arrived, they had drowned.