On the issue of disembarkation of 150 migrants being held on a coast guard ship in Sicily, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Lugi Di Maio insisted that other EU countries should share the burden. He threatened on television that “the soft line does not work, the hard line will be to withhold funds if they don’t listen to us.”
On the other hand, European Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein told a news conference that “unconstructive comments, let alone threats, are not helpful and will not get us any closer to a solution. The European Union is a community of rules and it operates on the basis of rules, not threats,”
Envoys from a dozen members states meet in Brussels to discuss disembarkation from the guard ship Diciotti.
