Europe migration: Why are so many migrants arriving in Lampedusa at once?

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00:00 Now to discuss all of this, I'm joined in our studio by our International Affairs Editor

00:04 Philip Turrell.

00:05 Philip, first of all, can you tell us more about why there are so many migrants arriving

00:11 in Lampedusa all at once?

00:13 Okay, well I think there are several reasons for this.

00:15 The main reason is that this is the summer and during the summer it's easier to get across

00:21 the Mediterranean, conditions are more favourable and the sea is calmer.

00:25 There have been groups of migrants waiting for several days for the seas to calm down

00:31 and the authorities in Lampedusa have said basically it's a bit like an armada of ships

00:35 arriving in one go and they really can't cope with it.

00:38 Just to give you a figure for example, you said 7,000 migrants have arrived over a period

00:42 of 24 hours.

00:43 The only ability that the authorities in Lampedusa have is to take in 400 migrants.

00:49 So all the others are roaming about trying to find shelter, trying to find food and water.

00:54 Some have been taken in by a local fairground for example, but there is tremendous pressure

00:59 on the authorities, on charities, on humanitarian organisations and they're saying, well look,

01:05 we need desperately to have some help in dealing with these migrants.

01:09 Now the other problem as far as all of this is concerned is that many of these migrants

01:15 don't want to stay in Lampedusa.

01:16 They want to obviously go further north to other countries in Europe and that is another

01:21 problem that Italy has also got to deal with because not many European countries want to

01:27 take those migrants in and that has seriously damaged relations with several of them between

01:34 Italy and its neighbours.

01:36 And it's also bad news for Giorgia Maloney, the Prime Minister of Italy who was elected

01:42 on a ticket of stopping the migrants from coming into the country and it looks as though

01:46 that has not worked as far as she's concerned, although she said she's not surprised by this

01:50 latest high number of arrivals in Lampedusa.

01:55 So what the government's been trying to do is to clamp down on the traffickers, to stop

02:01 organisations from letting boats go out several times in a row to try to bring migrants into

02:07 the country, but that so far hasn't really had any effect.

02:11 We mentioned some of those northern European countries and those migrants wanting to move

02:16 on from Italy, but Germany has just announced that it is to stop taking in those migrants

02:23 from Italy.

02:24 Why this decision now from the Germans?

02:26 Well, this all boils down to the Dublin Agreement, which means basically when a migrant gets

02:31 into the European Union country, it has to apply for asylum in the country in which it

02:34 arrives.

02:35 Now, many of them then go off to other countries and normally they should be sent back to the

02:39 country where they came in there to apply for asylum.

02:43 And Germany is saying, well, look, Italy is not taking back the migrants that it should.

02:48 We've got 12,000 requests for asylum that should be processed in Italy, but all the

02:53 Italians have done so far is to take in only 10 of those migrants that should be having

02:59 their asylum requests processed by the Italian authorities.

03:02 So they say, well, while that has not been sorted out, we're not taking any more migrants

03:06 in.

03:07 And on top of that, we now have a route broken out with Tunisia and the European Union over

03:12 money being given to the Tunisians because a group of Foreign Affairs Committee members

03:17 from the EU were due to travel to Tunisia to talk about the situation there.

03:21 They've been barred from travelling because Tunisia is angry about criticism from the

03:25 EU over this, saying that the money shouldn't go to a country that has such an authoritarian

03:30 government.

03:31 So there's not much progress there either.

03:33 So the whole situation is quite confusing at the moment.

03:36 Thank you so much, Philip Turrell, for this analysis on the situation in Lampedusa.

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