Rescue Ship Docks in Malta as 8 Nations Agree to Take Its Migrants

ROME — A rescue ship carrying more than 200 African migrants docked in Malta on Wednesday after eight European countries agreed to take them in, ending an impasse that had left the ship stranded in the Mediterranean for a week.

The solution, coming one day before a European Union summit in Brussels that will cover migration, highlighted the enormous obstacles that the bloc faces in finding common ground on the issue.

Countries that border the Mediterranean and have borne the brunt of arrivals from North Africa, are increasingly insisting that other nations share the responsibility for taking them in.

But Prime Minister Joseph Muscat of Malta said that the arrangement made over the migrants onboard the ship, the MV Lifeline, was an ad hoc agreement and “not a pattern” or “a blueprint.”

It was, he added during a news conference shown live on his Facebook page, “a situation where there were member states who showed that for them the values of European solidarity are not something to be found just in the treaties, but that we act together.”

In addition to Malta, the countries that agreed to take a share of the migrants were Belgium, France, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal, he said.

Germany — where a dispute between Chancellor Angela Merkel and her interior minister over immigration policy has threatened the chancellor’s coalition for weeks — was not among them.

Horst Seehofer, the interior minister, told Parliament that he was reluctant to set a precedent, even though the ship is run by the German charity Mission Lifeline and five of the country’s 16 states expressed a willingness to take in some of the stranded migrants.

Muscat in turn emphasized that Malta had “no legal obligation and no responsibility in the matter,” and had acted for reasons of a “humanitarian nature.”

Both Malta and Italy had initially blocked the MV Lifeline from docking in their ports.

Muscat also said that the ship would be impounded, pending an investigation of its actions, its registration and its captain, whom the prime minister accused of disobeying the orders of the Italian authorities that coordinated the migrants’ rescue last week.

But Axel Steier, a Mission Lifeline founder, said that despite the Maltese government’s decision to impound the ship, he believed that “we have good arguments to show that they can’t take it.”

Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, a leader in a new populist government that has promised to curb migration, wrote on Twitter that the outcome of the standoff with the “outlaw Lifeline” was “another success of the Italian government.”

Earlier this month, another rescue vessel, the French ship Aquarius, was banned from docking in Italy and Malta. It was eventually allowed entry to Spain, which granted permission for its 630 passengers to dock after a lengthy odyssey.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy on Wednesday outlined to Italy’s Parliament the government’s strategy for migration, which he also presented at an informal meeting of European leaders in Brussels on Sunday.

The Italian strategy, which calls for greater cooperation between the European Union and the migrants’ countries of origin, affirms the principle that regardless of where a migrant first arrives, that person is “disembarking in Europe,” Conte said. Currently, asylum-seekers must request refugee status in the member state they enter.

“With its contribution, especially on the subject of immigration,” Conte said, Italy could help to make the summit that begins Thursday “a watershed, a turning point of change for Europe.”

With countries like Greece and Italy introducing measures to stem the flow of migrants, making Spain increasingly a main point of arrival, Muscat said Europe had to find a way to better handle the situation.

“It’s not an idea of stopping, it’s the idea of managing, and making sure that people are encouraged to apply in the right manner,” he said, adding that it was also vital to differentiate between people affected by war and violence and those coming for economic opportunity.

Humanitarian corridors should be set up to help those who have a right to migrate, Muscat said, adding that those who come to Europe for economic reasons should be “sent back ASAP.”