The Norwegian Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that its country would welcome twenty migrants rescued by the ship “Ocean Viking” after its landing in France, Italy having refused access to its ports.
The "Ocean Viking", a rescue ship chartered by a French NGO, picked up 234 migrants at sea off the Libyan coast, then waited for weeks to be able to find a port willing to see them disembark.
After having long asked Italy to be able to dock in one of its ports, the ship landed in Toulon (southern France) at the beginning of November, in a decision that the French government described as “ exceptional”.
123 migrants were refused entry into France
About 40 minors have been placed with French social services and 189 adults have been taken to a detention center to assess the validity of their asylum applications, an official from the French Interior Ministry said on Friday.
Among the adults, 123 did not provide sufficient evidence to support their asylum claims and were refused entry to France, the same source added.
A further 66 adults will be transferred to eleven EU countries, including Germany, Finland and Portugal.
Norway, although not part of the EU, indicated on Saturday that it would receive twenty.
"The government took this extraordinary decision in response to a request received from France to help it in a difficult situation," a ministry spokeswoman told AFP in an email.
She said that the people her country would welcome "had a high probability of meeting the criteria for obtaining refugee status".
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