EU countries agree to share out Ocean Viking migrantshttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-oceanviking/eu-countries-agree-to-share-out-ocean-viking-migrants-idUSKCN1VD119Quote
BRUSSELS/MILAN (Reuters) - Six European Union countries have agreed to take in the 356 migrants stranded at sea for two weeks aboard the Ocean Viking rescue vessel, ending the latest standoff in the bloc over migration across the Mediterranean.
The migrants aboard the ship, which is run by French charities, will be taken to Malta before being received by France, Germany, Romania, Luxembourg, Portugal and Ireland, the EU migration commissioner and Maltese prime minister said.
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The plight of the Ocean Viking, run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and another French charity, SOS Méditerranée, has exposed Europe’s failure to come up with a coherent policy to deal with migration from Africa through Libya.
EU states have been at loggerheads over how to handle refugees and migrants reaching its shores since a 2015 spike in Mediterranean arrivals of people fleeing conflicts and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
With the EU’s eastern, ex-communist states refusing to host any of the new arrivals, the bloc has increasingly turned to tightening its borders and asylum laws, turning people away or paying countries like Turkey to stop them reaching Europe.
Seems the French are all about humanity etc... but expects the rest of the EU to take the refugees. Apparently the rest of the EU has been a tad more resistant, this time.