When Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, refused to let the rescue ship Aquarius – which was carrying 629 men, women, and children – land, the European Union was presented with yet another migration emergency. The vessel was stranded for days in the Mediterranean looking for a place to dock, with an EU-wide solution nowhere to be found. Eventually, Spain’s newly-installed socialist government stepped up and allowed the boat to dock.
Madrid’s act of statesmanship was a win for everybody: it allowed Salvini to claim that his tough immigrant policy was working; Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, could burnish his credentials as a humanitarian; and it solved a problem for the EU, which has been pathetically ineffective on the migration question. But just as is happening in Italy, Greece and Germany, there may come a time when the Spanish public gets tired of being Europe’s latest welcome mat for tens of thousands of people trying to flee Africa.
It’s true that migration flows into the EU have decreased dramatically.
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