Italy PM Giuseppe Conte slams EU's "hypocrisy" on migrant ship, threatens action

ROME: Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Friday accused Italy's European Union partners of "hypocrisy" after they failed to offer a solution to a migrant stand-off in Sicily, and said it would have repercussions for Italy's stance on other issues.

Italy has refused to allow 150 migrants to disembark from a ship docked in Catania until its partners agree to take in some of them, but a meeting on the issue in Brussels failed to yield any agreement.

Conte said in a Facebook post that Europe had failed to show solidarity or responsibility and decried the gap between words and deeds "which sometimes mutates into hypocrisy."

He said Italy would take account of this and "act accordingly ... on all the questions we have to deal with in Europe."