Europe migrant crisis: What can Rome expect from Brussels?
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Transcript
00:00 Correspondent Dave Keating explains.
00:02 The spokesperson just had a reaction here at the European Commission
00:07 saying that the decision to declare national states of emergency
00:10 is entirely a national competence
00:13 and the European Commission can't comment one way or the other.
00:16 They had a similar line, for instance, at the start of the COVID pandemic
00:20 when countries were declaring national states of health emergencies.
00:23 The Commission didn't really get involved in that.
00:25 So we can see here, at least initially,
00:27 the Commission intends to stay out of this.
00:29 They said they're going to monitor the situation
00:32 and continue to supply Italy with the help that they can.
00:35 The spokesperson noted that Italy, part of this emergency declaration
00:41 is the mobilization of five million euros in national funds
00:45 to help stem the migrant arrivals,
00:49 to help to deal with the migrant arrivals that are happening.
00:52 There are EU funds also available to Italy.
00:55 So the Commission spokesperson said that would also continue
00:58 to be made available to Italy.
01:00 But this kind of flies in the face, this reaction to what the Italian
01:05 civil protection minister said yesterday when announcing the state of emergency.
01:10 He said that this is not going to solve the problem,
01:13 the state of emergency, and that they need some kind of European solution.
01:17 But a European solution has been really hard to come by.
01:20 We just get repeated discussions on this at the European Council,
01:24 the summits of all of the EU prime ministers and presidents.
01:26 But they just can't agree on any lasting European wide solution
01:33 to having a more logical, more regimented approach to migration.
01:39 And the Commission, we could see today, doesn't seem to have a big appetite
01:42 to take this to the member states again, as they have tried many times in the past.
01:47 Dave Keating reporting for us.