The Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, who spoke today in the Senate illustrated in the courtroom the reconstruction of the facts regarding the controversial story of the Diciotti ship. Conte said that on 15 August the General Command of the Port Authorities "noted the inertia of the Maltese search and rescue authorities, assessed as probable the need for a rescue intervention to transfer all the occupants of the boat in difficulty to another unit. - once he had entered the area of national responsibility ".
Conte, then speaking of the Italian attitude towards the issue of migrants, specified that "What has changed compared to the past is that Italy is no longer available to welcome migrants indiscriminately, contributing, albeit unwittingly, to increasing the trafficking of human beings and making up for the responsibility that belongs to the European Union, blunting the bond of solidarity that weighs on each Member State. After the Diciotti case, the Italian government has promoted an insistent initiative aimed at urging the European institutions to promptly implement the conclusions adopted following the European Council at the end of June. The Italian government is reiterating to the other EU member states and to the European institutions the firm conviction that the definition of a stable and sustainable mechanism for the overall management of the disembarkation, redistribution and repatriation phases cannot be postponed ".
The Prime Minister, in the concluding phase of his speech, underlined the attitude shown by the EU member states, noting that "We are registering signs of rapprochement in the sign of a common awareness of the member states that if we do not work on a similar not only would the decisions taken at the last European Council not be consistently implemented, but the commitment to solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility provided for by the Treaty for the Functioning of the European Union would be breached. Our migration policy can be found in specific documents and official positions that we have supported in various European fora. It is a policy that starts from the recognition and protection of the fundamental rights of all those who have the right to asylum and humanitarian protection and aims to adopt an initiative to protect these migrants already from the countries of origin and transit ".