(ANSAmed) – BERLIN, AUGUST 22 – Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano is “barefaced” in complaining about high refugee arrivals to Italy while at the same time allegedly not respecting EU norms on them, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said Friday.

“It is rather barefaced that Interior Minister Angelino Alfano should on the one hand complain about the heavy burden deriving from the arrival of refugees across the Mediterrean while on the other he is not concerned with respecting European regulations on asylum matters,” Herrmann said.

Rome is deliberately ignoring standard refugee procedures such as finger-printing in order to let them seek asylum in other countries, Hermann added. “Italy in many cases intentionally does not take personal data and fingerprints from refugees to enable them to seek asylum in another country,” he told the DPA news agency.

Alfano recently said Italy’s huge Mare Nostrum search-and-rescue operation would stop and the EU’s border agency Frontex should step in to cope with a rising influx of asylum seekers from North Africa, many originally from Syria and Iraq. The EU has said Frontex is currently too small to take up the reins.(ANSAmed).