The Aquarius rescue ship will be allowed to dock in Malta and the 141 migrants on board will be distributed among other EU member countries.
The NGO-operated ship rescued the asylum seekers on Friday but European countries had been at loggerheads over who should take them in.
In a repeat of events involving the same ship two months ago, Italy refused to let the Aquarius into its ports. In June, Spain let the Aquarius dock in Valencia and this time it is Malta that will take in the ship.
The EU’s smallest country “will give Aquarius permission to enter its ports, despite having no legal obligation to do so. All reported 141 persons on board will be distributed amongst France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain,” tweeted Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.
Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez tweeted, will take 60 of the migrants. He added that Spain had coordinated the deal. That was at odds with a statement from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said it was a “a French-Maltese initiative.”
The five EU member countries will also take in 60 of the 114 migrants that Malta rescued on Monday, the Maltese government said in a press release.
Aquarius rescued the asylum seekers, most of whom are from Eritrea and Somalia, from Libyan waters. “There are 73 children under 18 years of age onboard. Of those, 67 are travelling alone without a parent or legal guardian to care for them,” said the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières, which has medical personnel on the boat.
Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right League, said earlier this summer that Italy’s ports would remain closed to NGO-operated vessels conducting rescue operations in the Mediterranean. Migrants on board the Aquarius have reportedly declared that five ships ignored their pleas for help.
“It’s a situation that shows how neither the Italians nor the EU have a plan for these situations,” said an EU diplomat.
European Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos stressed the need for a solution to the problem of who takes in such ships. “Intense contacts have been ongoing over the past days, facilitated and coordinated by the European Commission, as we have committed to do until more stable arrangements can be put in place,” he said in a statement.
But “we cannot rely on ad-hoc arrangements, we need sustainable solutions. It is not the responsibility of one or a few Member States only, but of the European Union as a whole,” he added.