Fourteen Member States of the European Union gave their agreement in principle to a "solidarity mechanism" for the distribution of migrants, led by Paris and Berlin, on Monday 22 July in Paris, said Emmanuel Macron, who reported on an "active" participation of eight of them.

"We must strengthen the effectiveness of our solidarity among Europeans," said the head of the French state to the press at the Elysee, after an interview with Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and António Manuel de Carvalho Ferreira Vitorini, Director General of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Clinging on the issue of migrants

Four days after a first meeting in Helsinki, the European Ministers of the Interior and Foreign Affairs met in Paris to discuss the issue of migration, a regular source of tension between bloc countries, particularly with Italy, which complains to have to manage alone the influx on its coasts.

Sign of tensions still alive, the Italian Minister of the Interior, Matteo Salvini, did not make the trip to France and had previously warned, in a letter to his French counterpart Christophe Castaner, against decisions "taken only in Paris and Berlin ".

"Of these 14, eight Member States have actively noted their cooperation and therefore their participation," he told the press at the Elysee. According to the entourage of the French head of state, this "club of volunteers" includes at this stage France, Germany, Finland, Luxembourg, Portugal, Lithuania, Croatia and Ireland.

The names of the six other countries "interested" in this "systematic, rapid and dignified" distribution mechanism for migrants rescued by NGO ships in the Mediterranean have not been disclosed, but negotiations are ongoing. added from the same source.

A situation "extremely worrying"

Emmanuel Macron also reiterated on Monday "the express and insistent request" of France to Libya to put an "end to the confinement" of migrants trapped in this country. The situation in Libya is "extremely worrying," said the head of state.

He also deplored "bombing" of refugee camps and attacks "this morning" against a UNHCR center in Libya. In recent months, NGOs have denounced the conditions of detention of migrants, according to them according to them the migration policy of the European countries concluded with the Libyans.

With Reuters and AFP