The wandering ship Ocean Viking, heavy with migrants on board with nowhere to dock, is causing confusion among European countries. After a long struggle with Italy, France agreed to receive the ship at the port of Toulon, “on an exceptional basis.”
The Ocean Viking, flying a Norwegian flag, belongs to the NGO SOS Méditerranée. With its predecessor, the Aquarius, it has saved 37,000 refugees shipwrecked in the Mediterranean Sea since 2016. Each of its sea trips costs €14,000. The association, which is based in several European countries, is 90% financed by private donations, although some public bodies, such as the Mairie de Paris, occasionally make donations.
Ocean Viking is currently housing 234 migrants and has been waiting 20 days for permission to dock somewhere in Europe. The European rule in this matter says that the boat can dock at the nearest port, in this case, an Italian one. Rome, however, refused. French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin denounced the Italian attitude as “incomprehensible” and launched a retaliatory measure: the suspension of the reception of 3,500 refugees currently stationed in Italy and waiting to cross into France. The interior minister then agreed to let the boat dock in Toulon, the main French military port in the Mediterranean. It is the first time a boat supported by an NGO has docked in France.
Although SOS Méditerranée claims to act in accordance with international maritime law, it often provokes political attacks from parties opposed to uncontrolled immigration. In France, as in Italy, the reception or rejection of the Ocean Viking has aroused passions.
In France, welcoming the Ocean Viking is far from unanimous and has triggered a heated debate in the National Assembly, after a Rassemblement National MP called for the ship to be sent back to Africa. The RN president Jordan Bardella went further in front of the press, criticising “the presentation of a fait accompli.” “With us, the Ocean Viking, like the Aquarius in 2018, would not be able to dock on the French coast,” he added.
In Italy, Giorgia Meloni, newly arrived in power, has made the control of illegal immigration one of the priorities of her government. It was therefore unthinkable for her to give in on this issue. The French government, quick to scrutinise the Italian leader’s actions as ‘fascist’ drift, energetically denounced her refusal to welcome the boat. The Italian government defensively responded with equal vigour. “France’s reaction to the request to take in 234 migrants, when Italy has taken in 90,000 this year alone, is totally incomprehensible,” Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi said on Thursday, November 10th. Italy believes it has done more than its fair share and is perfectly entitled to turn away the ship, especially as it has only recently taken in several groups of migrants—deliberately favouring women and children, sending back the men.
Italy’s refusal of the Ocean Viking is both the enforcement of the new prime minister’s policies and the reasonable response to new data. The Italian press agency Adnkronos revealed, from a report by Frontex, the European agency controlling borders, that migrants from Libya always rely on the presence of NGOs to cross the Mediterranean. One can read there that “migrants coming from Libya constantly state that they have checked for the presence of NGOs in the region before their departure, explaining that in the absence of NGO ships in the Mediterranean, many refuse to leave.” Organisations like SOS Méditerranée thus play a key role in the massive influx of refugees swelling over Europe by coordinating their actions with the movements of sea smugglers. The Italian government does not want to encourage those unwholesome manoeuvres.
French Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin is playing a delicate game. He wants to distance himself from the ‘inhumanity’ of the Rassemblement National by welcoming the boat “exceptionally,” while playing up the long wait at sea and unjust suffering of those on board because of the Italian authorities. But ‘at the same time’—according to the well-known Macronist line of conduct—he must not give the impression that he has renounced the firmness of his speech on immigration, newly relevant on the occasion of the Lola travesty. He therefore explained that while France would willingly welcome the boat, migrants who do not meet the criteria of asylum seekers “will be deported directly.” An unconvincing strategy according to Marine Le Pen, who believes that with this decision, “Emmanuel Macron is sending a dramatic signal of laxity.”
Her view is shared by Bruno Retailleau, leader of Les Républicains in the Senate. “The migratory firmness displayed by Gérald Darmanin was therefore only a decoy: France folds at the first showdown,” he said in a statement, while his colleague and rival for the party presidency, Éric Ciotti, castigated “the bad signal sent to the sea smugglers.”
Director of SOS Méditerranée Sophie Beau welcomed the French decision to let the boat dock in Toulon with “a relief tinged with bitterness.” For her, this affair is an opportunity to hammer home the need for a common and sustainable reception policy at the European level, with a genuine distribution system, which she imagines would leave little room for voluntary action.
Despite the early contact between Meloni and Macron, the tug of war over the Ocean Viking proves that the French government is at loggerheads with the new Italian government and that the atmosphere is not one of courteous discussion or compromise. French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire had some very harsh words for Rome on Thursday, November 10th. Rome has “taken the decision not to behave like a responsible European state,” he said, noting that France “will draw the consequences” of the Italian attitude on other aspects of its “bilateral relationship.” In short, France will not give Giorgia Meloni’s Italy any gifts and will fight the ideological battle toe to toe. In the meantime, controls have been restored at the French-Italian border.
On the domestic political front, the opportunity on such a dossier is too good to be missed, for Emmanuel Macron and his party, but also more broadly for the Left, to emphasise the similarities between the Rassemblement National and Meloni’s ‘post-fascist’ party—an efficient way to discredit, one more time, the party of the French national Right.
