Europe’s migrant crisis has a fresh new face: a 31-year-old German ship captain who was arrested at the end of June for defying Italy’s zero-tolerance “closed ports” policy.

With a cascade of boos pouring down from onlookers, the dreadlocked Carola Rakete, captain of the aid boat Sea Watch 3, was taken into custody by armed Italian officers at a port on the tiny Mediterranean island of Lampedusa. Rakete faces a fine of 50,000 euros and possible jail time for bringing 40 ailing migrants, stranded at sea for much of June, to shore.

The timing of Italy’s arrest of the young German, captaining a Dutch-flagged ship, couldn’t have

come at a more fraught moment for Italy and the European Union. In the hours before her arrest, the European Commission had tried to broker a deal to avoid a diplomatic row, proposing that the migrants be distributed between five European countries. That olive branch failed to diffuse the showdown at the port, however.

At the G20 Summit in Japan, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte scrambled to address the matter in the hours after her arrest, but his comments did little to lower the geopolitical tensions back home. Hours later, Germany expressed its indignation with the arrest of one of its own. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas was particularly critical of Italy’s heavy-handed approach. "It's a humanitarian duty to save lives," he wrote on Twitter. "It is on the Italian judiciary to swiftly clarify the accusations."

Meanwhile, separate crowdfunding appeals to finance Sea Watch’s legal defense launched in Italy and Germany in recent days raised more than 1 million euros, a bit of a public relations black-eye for Italy’s anti-immigration government led by the Facebook-savvy vice premier Matteo Salvini.

For weeks, the Sea Watch saga has played out daily on social media, in the press and even in the halls of the Vatican where Pope Francis weighed in to defend the aid group. The latest episode risks further dividing the bloc down a Left-Right fault line, pitting civil society groups, clearly in the corner of Rakete, against hardliners such as Salvini who’s staked his rise to power on cracking down on mass migration reaching Italian shores.

Salvini also couldn’t have been all that pleased with the outcome. The ordeal in Lampedusa occurred as European leaders met in Brussels at the end of June in an intense fit of horse-trading to secure the bloc’s top positions, including a successor to European Central Bank President Mario Draghi. That, and the presidencies of the European Commission, Parliament, Council are all up for grabs. Traditionally, member states put aside their differences during these negotiations, trading favors and striking alliances to get their preferred candidate the plumb assignments.

And Italy, more than ever, could use some friends in Brussels. The country has run afoul of European Union budget rules, and is facing a possible 3.5 billion euro fine plus demands to introduce more austere spending measures. Salvini, meanwhile, has repeatedly urged Brussels to back off as he hopes to deliver tax cuts to Italian businesses and taxpayers. This impasse over Italy’s budget has raged for much of the past year, at times roiling global stock markets and sending the so-called “risk spread” between Italian and German bonds soaring.

On Monday morning, the spread was little moved, but that’s mainly because the markets believe another Italian – ECB president Draghi – is poised to cut rates and re-introduce a new tranche of bond-buying in his remaining months, two moves that would serve as a lifeline to Salvini and his governing coalition partners in Rome.

欧洲难民危机有了一张全新面孔，那就是31岁的德国船长卡罗拉·拉科特。由于违反意大利的零容忍“闭港”政策，拉科特于6月底被捕。

在围观者潮水般的嘘声中，梳着脏辫的海洋观察3号（Sea Watch 3）救援船船长拉科特在地中海小岛兰佩杜萨岛港口被全副武装的意大利警察逮捕。拉科特将被罚款5万欧元，而且有可能入狱，原因是她将40名身体虚弱的难民带上了岸，这些难民在6月的大多数时间里一直在海上飘荡。

这位年轻德国船长指挥的船只悬挂着荷兰国旗。对意大利和欧盟来说，本次逮捕行动恰恰出现在一个最不愉快的时刻。就在逮捕拉科特之前的几个小时里，欧盟委员会一直在设法安排一项协议，以免发生外交纠纷，具体内容是在五个欧洲国家之间分配移民。但此项示好举措未能阻止兰佩杜萨岛港口的那一幕最终上演。

在日本的G20峰会上，意大利总理朱塞佩·孔特在拉科特被捕后的几小时里努力解决这一问题，但他的表态几乎未能缓解欧洲的地缘政治紧张局势。几个小时后，德国对本国公民被捕表示愤慨。德国外长海科·马斯专门批评了意大利的冷酷做法。他在推特上写道：“拯救生命是人道主义责任。意大利司法部门应该迅速说明指控理由。”

与此同时，在意大利和德国，为德国难民救援组织海洋观察打这场官司而发起的几项众筹活动近几天获得了100多万欧元捐款，这对Facebook达人、兼任意大利副总理的马泰奥·萨尔维尼来说略有些公关灾难的意味。

几周来，海洋观察组织的故事每天都会出现在社交媒体和新闻上，甚至传到了梵提冈——教皇方济各也站出来为该组织说话。上述最新事件有可能让欧盟进一步分裂为左右两派，让显然支持拉科特的民间社会团体和萨尔维尼等通过打击前往意大利的大量移民而上台的强硬派对立起来。

萨尔维尼对此事的结果可能也不是完全满意。拉科特于6月底在兰佩杜萨岛遭逮捕时，欧盟各国领导人正在布鲁塞尔紧张地讨价还价，目的是争夺欧盟主要领导职位，包括欧洲央行行长马里奥·德拉吉的继任者。除欧洲央行行长外，欧盟委员会主席、欧洲议会议长以及欧盟理事会主席人选均有待确定。以往，成员国会在此类磋商中搁置争议，交换利益并结成联盟，以便让他们最青睐的人得到任命。

而意大利可能比以往任何时候都需要布鲁塞尔的朋友。由于一直未能遵守欧盟预算政策，欧盟可能对意大利罚款35亿欧元并要求其采取更严格的开支措施。萨尔维尼则反复敦促欧盟方面做出让步，因为他希望为意大利企业和个人减税。去年大部分时间里，意大利预算问题都一直处于僵持状态，而且有时会引起全球股市波动并让所谓的意大利-德国债券“风险利差”大幅上升。

本周一上午，该利差基本未变，但主要原因是市场相信另一位意大利人——欧洲央行行长德拉吉将在余下的几个月任期内降低利率并启动新一轮债券购买行动。这两项措施有可能成为萨尔维尼及其执政联盟伙伴的救命稻草。（财富中文网）

译者：Charlie

审校：夏林