Eric Ciotti said no French port should take in the Aquarius

We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

Sign up fornow and never miss the top politics stories again.

French conservative lawmaker Eric Ciotti said no French port should take in the Aquarius, the humanitarian ship stranded in international waters in the Mediterranean since Saturday.

“No French port – not Corsica, not Nice, not Marseille [should take in the Aquarius],” Mr Ciotti told the French television channel CNews, adding that the migrant ship should “head back towards the Libyan coast”.

“Do we want Nice to become the next Lampedusa?” he said, referring to the Italian island which has become a popular landing point for migrants. “I hope France will hold firm on this issue”.

Italy and Malta have both refused to let the rescue ship, whose passengers include 11 children and seven pregnant women rescued off the coast of Libya by the French charity SOS Mediterranée on the weekend, to dock, prompting the European Union and the UN’s refugee agency to call for an end to the standoff.

On Monday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, a socialist who took power less than two weeks ago, said that the ship could dock in the eastern port of Valencia, where it is currently headed.

Gilles Simeoni, the nationalist leader of the French Mediterranean island of Corsica, also offered to host the migrants after SOS Mediterranée warned that the ship would struggle to reach Spain safely due to bad weather and dwindling provisions on board.