First France closed its border with Italy at Ventimiglia, an act which led to migrants protesting - and living - on the rocks there and to Italian police forcibly removing some of them. Then Hungary closed its border with Serbia and announced its intention to suspend the so-called "Dublin rules", under which migrants arriving in the EU have to be processed and apply for asylum in their first country of arrival. Meanwhile you will all have seen the shocking pictures from Calais of hundreds of migrants trying to board UK-bound lorries in any way they can. Not a good week in which to be a migrant, then - or a lorry driver. Whilst I accept that it must be very frightening indeed to be driving towards the Port of Calais in any kind of vehicle at the moment, it remains true that desperate people will resort to desperate measures and people who have been treated brutally will themselves become brutal.
The world's media focus may have temporarily shifted from the sea to the land drama but migrants continue to die in the Mediterranean: On Thursday the Port of Pozzallo again saw the sad sight of a body being carried ashore, this time from a Panamanian ship which had rescued 292 migrants. The dead man is reported to have been from Gambia and it has now been confirmed that he died from gunshot wounds. A man who had travelled with him and who was injured told Italian police that the shots had been fired by Libyan militia who had boarded the migrant boat. This has not yet been confirmed.
Yesterday morning a Swedish patrol boat brought 497 migrants who had been rescued in three operations to the Port of Catania. The patrol boat was also carrying the body of a woman and one of her fellow-passengers had been injured.
My own country, of which I am ashamed in this matter, has not only refused to take a migrant quota but has made it known that HMS Enterprise, the replacement ship for HMS Bulwark in the Mediterranean, will concentrate on intercepting people traffickers rather than search and rescue missions. I do not mean to imply that it would not participate in rescue missions if necessary but surely saving lives should be the priority? And does the Royal Navy really think it can do what the Italians, who have a good record in bringing people traffickers to justice, cannot? That is, at the very least, arrogant.
At Thursday night's Council of Europe dinner Premier Renzi has, rightly in my opinion, lambasted EU countries which have refused to take a migrant quota [a share of 40,000 migrants who have arrived in Greece and Italy] and has said,
"If you cannot reach agreement on 40,000 migrants you are not worthy of calling yourselves European. If this is your idea of Europe you can keep it. Either show some solidarity or stop wasting our time."
Exactly.
Update: 26.6.15 at 13.23:
It seems that, after a long night, agreement has been reached on migrant quotas. Mr Renzi has called the agreement "modest" and the UK has, shamefully, opted out.
