MIGRANTS AND REFUGEES
Italy threatens EU over influx
Diplomats were meeting in Brussels on Tuesday over the latest migration threat from Italy
Italy has threatened to bar ships of the EU naval force from bringing migrants picked up in the Mediterranean to its ports unless the bloc comes up with ways to share the burden of taking them in, officials in Brussels said. Diplomats were meeting in Brussels on Tuesday over the latest migration threat from Italy, whose new populist government has already kept several rescue ships with hundreds of migrants on board stuck at sea for days. EU officials say Rome gave the EU until the end of August to come up with a clear relocation scheme for migrants picked from the sea by ships from the Operation Sophia joint naval force, or it will no longer allow them into its ports. Any swift agreement on hosting people from the ships by other EU states is unlikely. EU states have failed to agree on migration policy since migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa began arriving in huge numbers. Italy, where more than 650,000 people arrived since 2014, has felt increasingly overwhelmed....
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