The European Parliament has called on the Commission to find a resettlement solution for 121 migrants stranded between Malta and Italy.
In an open letter, EP president David Sassoli on Thursday urged European Commission president Jean Claude Junker to intervene by arranging for the “fair distribution of the migrants”.
Spanish migrant charity vessel Proactiva Open Arms has been stuck at sea with 121 migrants on-board for nearly a week.
“We have to disembark these people here. Italy, Malta or the European Union itself must work to find a solution because the rights of these people are being violated,” the NGO told AFP by telephone from Rome on Monday.
The Open Arms is currently about 50 kilometres southeast of Lampedusa with a cargo of people on board whom it rescued last week from two migrant boats off the coast of Libya. It is awaiting permission to dock at a nearby port.
The charity has said that Malta has ignored its request to dock and unload its passengers while Italy only allowed two pregnant women and the sister of one of the women to be evacuated to the country for medical reasons.
The 121 migrants still on board, including two babies and another 30 minors, need “medical and psychiatric assistance,” the charity said.
Meanwhile, Mr Sassoli said the fate of people rescued at sea was being exploited for political purposes by governments.
“Every time a vessel reaches European waters, the same scene is repeated and the same rhetoric is spouted. The latest case involves the Open Arms, a boat with 121 people on board, which has nowhere to go,” he said.
The parliament's president also lamented the fact that there was no suggestion that assistance for the stranded migrants would be forthcoming.
“According to press reports, the people on board include 31 minors, among them Ethiopian twins only nine months old, and women whose bodies bear the indelible marks of violence and mistreatment.”
“If the European Union were to remain indifferent to their fate, it would be piling suffering on top of suffering, and I am sure that this is not what the guardians of the European Treaties believe in their hearts to be right,” he added.