According to France’s Interior Minister Christophe Castaner, some aid groups operating in the Mediterranean Sea seem at times to be accomplices to human traffickers and smugglers in the region. Calling for a “responsible attitude”, the minister pointed to “a real collusion between smugglers and some NGOs”, citing their detected phone communication to "facilitate the migrants' departure from Libyan coasts in appalling conditions", the minister remarked at the press conference of the G7 interior ministers’ meeting in Paris on Friday, which aims to prepare for the upcoming G7 talks in Biarritz slated for August.
His sentiment echoes that of his Italian counterpart Matteo Salvini, who reiterated his firm stance on illegal immigration.
On Thursday, the Italian minister of the interior and leader of the right-wing League party, Matteo Salvini, condemned the role of NGOs in the Mediterranean, saying that he had received the support of his French, German, and British colleagues, and of the G7 as a whole, over his position.
"To my great satisfaction, I am not the only one to have doubts about NGOs in the Mediterranean. Ask my French, German and British colleagues. Everyone at the table noted it: the NGOs are a problem and they help human traffickers," he pointed out, as quoted by The Local.
Also, Salvini said on Thursday that he had told Germany to deal with a ship run by a German charity carrying dozens of migrants picked up in the Mediterranean as they headed for the Italian island of Lampedusa.
"The ship is German property, with a German flag and a German crew… It's their problem, they must deal with it", Salvini said on the side-lines of the G7 meeting, echoing his statement last month that he would close Italy’s ports to migrant rescue NGOs in a bid to force Europe to take its share of asylum-seekers.
When later asked to share his take on his purported support for Salvini, France’s Interior Minister Castaner, a member of French President Emmanuel Macron's pro-European government, stressed that although he has political differences with his Italian colleague, both countries agreed to cooperate on migration issues.
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