France's Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said in an interview on BFM TV news on Tuesday that Paris was not prepared to allow the Aquarius rescue ship to dock at the Marseille port and let dozens of migrants to enter France.
"For the moment it's 'no'," Bruno Le Maire told a BFM reporter.
"We are in discussion with other European countries (…) to find a safe port of disembarkation and to distribute the asylum seekers on board among progressive, voluntary European countries," said Nathalie Loiseau.
A Portuguese official has stated that Lisbon has agreed on a deal with France and Spain to take in Aquarius migrants.
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Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has ordered the closure of Italian ports to migrants and, as an additional difficulty, the Aquarius has lost its Panamanian flag.
In several other high-profile cases earlier this year, other rescue vessels carrying hundreds of migrants had been denied permission to dock by several countries. EU member states have been calling for a resolution to the issue to be found at the union level.