The developments represent a major setback for the bloc, which recently agreed to create “disembarkation platforms” outside the EU to process migrants after Italy closed its ports to NGO ships ferrying illegal migrants over the sea from smuggler boats near the African coast.
“Italy does not want to be the only country where migrants… disembark,” Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi wrote in a letter to EU foreign policy boss Federica Mogherini, adding that European leaders should persuade the countries the migrants come from to stop them embarking in the first place.