The compassion of the Aquarius will not solve the migrant crisis

Few can witness the plight of the hundreds of migrants rescued in the Mediterranean without feeling sympathy for their predicament. More than 100 children are among the 629 passengers who were picked up from small boats and dinghies by the Aquarius, which was then denied a safe port in Italy and Malta before Spain agreed it could dock in Valencia.

Until recently, the ship would almost certainly have ended up in Lampedusa; but the Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini shut the ports in line with the tougher stand on immigration being taken by the new populist government. This has confronted the rest of the EU once again with the political implications of mass immigration from Africa, just as happened in Germany two years ago when Angela Merkel lifted the barriers to a million migrants seeking entry mostly through Turkey.

That land route was largely cut off, encouraging more desperate migrants to make the dangerous and often fatal journey in unseaworthy vessels from the Libyan coast. They rely on non-governmental organisations like SOS Méditerranée, which operates the Aquarius, to pick them up in the name of common humanity.

But the more hard-headed must question whether the very presence of these rescue vessels is encouraging people to pay traffickers and risk their lives knowing they will be taken to an EU port rather than back to an African one like Tunis or Algiers. The new Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez will doubtless win plaudits for agreeing to take the Aquarius and its passengers. But his action, however well-meaning, is not going to resolve this problem and risks fuelling the illegal smuggling which the EU is trying to close down.