Migrant Taxi NGO Laments It May Have To Halt Activity Under New Meloni Govt Regulations

SALERNO, ITALY - DECEMBER 11: Migrants during the disembarking operations from the ship Ge
Ivan Romano/Getty Images
Chris Tomlinson

A Spanish migrant taxi NGO has stated that new regulations from the Italian government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni may cause NGOs to halt their activity in the Mediterranean sea.

The Spanish taxi NGO Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario (Humanitarian Maritime Rescue) expressed dismay with the Meloni government’s new proposed regulations which could see sanctions and fines brought against taxi NGOs bringing migrants to Italy.

“What will come to us is a frontal and quite violent attack. It is a war against NGOs. When we arrive in Italy they will sanction us with fines that will be unsustainable and we will not be able to pay them, which means that we will have to stop the boats,” the president of the NGO said in a statement, the newspaper Il Giornale reports.

According to the newspaper, the NGO had already postponed a planned mission to the Mediterranean this autumn after the election win of Ms Meloni and her centre-right coalition allies in September and say they are now looking to begin a mission in January, requesting financial support to deal with the upcoming regulations.

Last weekend, details of the new Italian government regulations were revealed by Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi who stated that the government wanted to have the new decree, known as a “Flow Decree” in effect by the end of this year.

Piantedosi stated that the regulations would look to separate ships carrying out rescues from those he stated were in “systematic searches for people in cahoots with traffickers.”

“Often the behaviour of some non-governmental organizations seems to be geared towards an organized campaign to bring migrants departing from Libya and other countries to Italy, rather than to carrying out actual rescues,” he said.

Part of the new regulations will demand that once a migrant taxi ship has made its first rescue it must return to a safe port immediately, rather than sail around to pick up migrants from other ships first.

Migrant taxi NGOs have dropped off over 10,000 migrants to Italy this year as of October and have been cited as a pull factor for illegal departures from North Africa by the European Union border agency Frontex in recent years.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

 

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