Rome - Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called for a change to European asylum rules on Sunday as neighbouring states tightened border controls, turning back African migrants and leaving hundreds stranded at the frontier in northern Italy.
In an interview with Milan's Corriere della Sera daily, Renzi said that after toppling Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the international community bore responsibility for the chaos in Libya that has opened the way for hundreds of thousands of migrants to cross by boat to southern Italy.
He called for a change to the so-called Dublin regulations, which assign most asylum seekers to the EU country they first enter and said he would discuss the issue with French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron when they visit Italy this week.
“If the European Council chooses solidarity, then good. If it doesn't, we have a Plan B ready but that would be a wound inflicted on Europe,” he said, without giving details. “We want to work to the last moment for a European response.”
Italy has long complained that its European partners are shirking their responsibilities and leaving southern Mediterranean countries like Italy and Greece to handle the migrant emergency without effective support.
Under the Schengen treaty, free cross-border movement is normally allowed within most of the European Union but France and Austria have been stepped up controls on migrants from Italy, turning back hundreds and leaving growing numbers camped out in railway stations in Rome and Milan.
Many have been prevented from entering France from the northern Italian coastal town of Ventimiglia but many have also been halted at the Austrian border near the town of Bolzano on the northeastern frontier.
“The halt to Schengen for a few days is holding them up here but Italy isn't their destination,” Renzi said.
The crisis has become one of the most pressing issues facing Renzi's centre-left led government, after the surge in support for the anti-immigration Northern League in last month's regional elections.
Governors in the prosperous regions of Lombardy and Veneto, both Northern League strongholds, have resisted transfers of refugees from overcrowded reception centres in the south.
The League has jumped on fears that immigrants arriving on crowded boats from Africa could bring diseases like malaria and scabies into Italy despite reassurances from health authorities.
A recent assault on a train conductor by a gang of machete-wielding youths of Latin American origin has added further fuel to the League's rhetoric on security and immigration.
“Have a good Saturday. Watch out for scabies, malaria and machetes,” the Northern League's bluntly spoken leader Matteo Salvini tweeted at the weekend.
Reuters