ROME, Italy - Around 26,000 people have made it across the Mediterranean so far this year, with many landing on the Italian island of Lampedusa which is just 150 kilometres from the Tunisian coast. Most end up interned in overcrowded camps.To relieve the pressure, Italy has started issuing refugees from Tunisia with six-month Italian visas which give them the right to move throughout the EU.
This has infuriated many other European politicians not least French President Nicolas Sarkozy. He has mooted lifting the Schengen agreement which abolished border checks between EU member states, in order to try to stop North African refugees from heading to France.- The German Interior Ministry said it was monitoring the situation and was prepared to strengthen border checks, although there was no indication that many North African refuges would be heading for Germany.
Nonetheless, Bavarian state Interior Minister Joachim Hermann said he was outraged by the Italian move. “The behaviour of the Italian government is unreasonable,” he told Der Spiegel magazine.- “Italy must stop granting residence permits to Tunisian economic refugees as soon as possible.”
The first Tunisian with such a visa was spotted in Germany last week according to a report in Der Spiegel. The man not only had the correct paperwork but also enough money for his stay in Germany, the report said, so the border police who had been making a routine check on a train from Milan to Munich, did not stop him.
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