Immigration, Iacolino and La Via: “The European Commission and Heads of State promise a lot but do little.” Parliament asks to review some Italian rules

Strasbourg complains that the elaboration of a “serious and coordinated program” to take on the emergency is postponed until June 2014. 

By Marco Frisone in Strasbourg

 Strasbourg – “Do more to prevent massacres like the one in Lampedusa, we need stronger measures to organize search and rescue missions.” It is José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, who once again this morning stresses in front of the European Parliament Plenary Session in Strasbourg. These appeals seem more like a slogan in the eyes of Italian Euro MEP’s. From these promises in fact, they have heard many, but measures that become real, still very few.

Following confirmation that a coordinated policy on immigration will not be discussed until June 2014, during the Italian Presidency, Giovanni La Via, (European People’s Party), and Salvatore Iacolino (EPP) expressed their disappointment. “We need a greater share of the burden. Today’s discussion showed how the Commission once again stopped in spite of its promises – and the member states as well” said Iacolino. According to the Italian MEP “there must be a more coordinated approach comprehensive reasoning on immigration.” Along the same lines Giovanni La Vie expresses his regret over the postponing until June 2014 of a European program to address immigration. The Sicilian MEP hopes anyway that in the next Council “we can get something more.”

A discontent shared by several MEP’s from the Chamber in Strasbourg. This morning, in fact, Hannes Swoboda, President of the political group Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and Guy Verhofstadt of Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) strongly attacked the Council for the decision to postpone the immigration program to June 2014. “It is a shame” for the president of S&D Swoboda, “we have been discussing a European immigration policy for15 years and today we are still here” affirms Verhofstadt.

The session also approved a motion where they ask Italy to “modify or review eventual regulations that impose sanctions on who provides assistance at sea,” basically, with the necessary diplomatic caution, they are talking about the unclear rules , which seems to impose to  prosecute those who provide assistance to migrants in distress at sea.