The subject at hand is the Italian navy’s Mare Nostrum operation, which has rescued 150,000 refugees and migrants from leaky, overloaded boats in the Mediterranean since it was launched a year ago.

An estimated 3,000 others have drowned since January: you can’t save them all. But the Italian navy has done an excellent job, with no help at all from other EU countries. This was very unfair, since Italy is simply the nearest part of the European Union to the North African coast that the boats start out from.

Finally, after endless pleas from Italy, the other EU members gathered in Brussels last month and agreed to replace the Italian ships with a joint EU mission named Triton. But there was a catch. In fact, there were several.