ROME: Italy allowed 16 of the 150 migrants stranded on board a coastguard ship at a Sicily port to disembark on Saturday, as government officials face questioning over the refusal to let all passengers off, media reported.

The Diciotti vessel has been docked at the port of Catania since Monday night, after the Italian government blocked migrants from leaving in the absence of commitments from the EU to relocate some of them.

Italy on Friday said it would pull its funding for the EU as a “compensatory measure” if the bloc refused to come forward and help with relocating the migrants, sparking a fresh immigration row between the bloc and Italy’s populist government.

According to local media, eleven women and five men — two of whom are said to have tuberculosis — were given permission by the government to get off, following a request by the port’s health authority for doctors to visit those on board.

The United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said EU member states should “urgently” provide places for those stranded on the ship. “In the meantime, UNHCR urges Italian authorities to allow the immediate disembarkation of those on board,” it said on Saturday.

A high-level meeting of a dozen EU member states in Brussels on Friday failed to produce an immediate solution for the Diciotti migrants.

“The European Union has decided to turn its back on Italy once again,” Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio wrote on his Facebook page, adding that his country was prepared to cut its EU contributions. “They want the 20 billion euros ($23 billion) paid by Italian citizens? Then let them demonstrate that they deserve it and that they are taking charge of a problem that we can no longer face alone. The borders of Italy are the borders of Europe,” he added.

Brussels quickly hit back at Di Maio’s remarks on Friday. “Unconstructive comments, let alone threats, are not helpful and they will not get us any closer to a solution,” European Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein told a briefing.

EU figures for 2016 say Italy contributed just under 14 billion euros to the EU budget — less than one per cent of its gross national income — while the bloc spent 11.6 billion euros in Italy.

Published in Dawn, August 26th, 2018