Migrant crisis: EU to reverse decision to halt rescue operations

European Union leaders who decided last year to halt the rescue of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean will reverse their decision on Thursday at an emergency summit convened in the aftermath of nearly 2,000 deaths in the sea.

Public outrage over the issue peaked this week after up to 900 migrants died last Sunday when their boat sank on its way to Europe from Libya.

The incident raised the migrant death toll to about 1,800 so far this year, compared to the fewer than 100 who died before the end of April last year, when a similar number attempted the journey.

Italy shut down the mission that saved the lives of more than 100,000 migrants last year as other EU countries refused to pay for it. It was replaced with a smaller EU scheme whose main focus is to patrol the bloc’s borders, after countries argued that saving migrants encouraged more to attempt the journey.

International organisations estimate that tens of thousands of African and Asian migrants are likely to attempt the journey every month, with the majority coming from Libya. Last year the death toll eventually reached 3,200.

The European leaders are likely to agree to double the funding and equipment available to two EU border patrol missions in the Mediterranean, a senior EU diplomat said.

Their area of operations would also probably be extended closer to the north African coast, not just waters near EU shores. Once patrolling in the area, maritime law obliges vessels to rescue people in trouble.

“On Thursday, our overriding priority is to prevent more people from dying at sea,” European Council president Donald Tusk said in his invitation letter to the leaders.

Memorial service

In Valetta, the capital of Malta, a memorial service was held for the 24 bodies recovered from Sunday’s disaster, when a triple-deck fishing boat capsized and sank near Libya with hundreds of people trapped in its hold.

Only 28 people were rescued. The vast majority were locked below decks, and their bodies have yet to be found.

The captain has been arrested in Italy on suspicion of multiple homicide, people smuggling and causing a shipwreck.

A room in Valetta’s Mater Dei Hospital morgue was blanketed with flowers sent mostly by local residents. A note attached to one bouquet read: “RIP brothers and sisters, you matter.”

“We proceeded out at sea with the hope of course to save as many people as we could, but unfortunately we didn’t arrive quite in time to save the migrants,” Maltese Navy Lt Mark Merceica, who attended the memorial, said.

“We were really disappointed and you could feel this through the entire crew, we were really hoping to arrive in time.”

EU strategy

The EU has struggled for years to forge an effective joint strategy to handle migrants fleeing war and turmoil in Africa and the Middle East.

Some EU countries, including Germany and the UK, had been worried that the search and rescue mission would encourage more migrants to take to rickety boats to attempt the crossing.

Many European politicians have acknowledged this week that last year’s decision not to replace the Italian search and rescue operation was a mistake.

“There was a view that the presence of rescue ships encouraged people to risk the crossing,” British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg wrote in The Guardian newspaper. “That judgment now looks to have been wrong.”

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International warned at the time that the EU decision would increase deaths. They now say action must be taken to reverse it.

Fight against traffickers

Many EU countries still believe search and rescue operations alone will not solve the problem, and more must be done to fight traffickers, who have taken advantage of lawlessness in Libya to set up operations that took 170,000 migrants across the Mediterranean last year.

One proposal the leaders will discuss is a military and civilian mission to capture and destroy the traffickers’ boats.

EU officials have drawn comparisons with operations to crack down on Somali pirates.

“We are determined to destroy their business model,” one senior EU official said, saying states would make “surgical”, intelligence-based operations once legal issues, including a possible UN mandate, had been addressed.

“We are not talking about war,” the official said. “No one is talking about boots on the ground.”

The leaders will also discuss a pilot project to resettle 5,000 to 10,000 refugees from Mediterranean countries to other EU states, the senior diplomat said.

The United Nations estimates that 36,000 have made the voyage so far this year.

Italy’s coast guard said it had rescued 220 migrants today, taken from two large rubber boats about 40 miles from the Libyan coast.

Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, head of the African Union Commission, said in Brussels that African nations must increase jobs and educational opportunities to discourage young Africans from leaving for Europe.

Renzi appeal

The European Union must take a collective stand to tackle migrant trafficking at its source in African countries, Italy’s prime minister Matteo Renzi has said, ahead of the emergency summit of the bloc’s leaders to discuss the crisis.

Mr Renzi spoke as Italian navy and coast guard vessels were taking more than 1,200 migrants rescued in other operations since Monday to ports across southern Italy.

One ship carrying 545 migrants, including 174 women and children, was heading to Salerno, on the mainland south of Naples, to ease the strain on overcrowded centres receiving migrants in ports in Sicily.

Mr Renzi said the EU should have a more visible role, with UN backing, in sub-Saharan countries where migrants originate, calling on the bloc to make a “long-term investment” in Africa.

“We are asking for this to be a priority for an EU that wants to be something other than an assembly of member countries in an economic club, something other than a club of learned technicians that knows all the geopolitical dynamics and forgets to respond to the pain of our times,” Mr Renzi told Italian parliament.

Mr Renzi, who has often urged Europe to share more of the responsibility for handling the migrant crisis, said the latest tragedy had galvanized world attentio. He said he was very optimistic that the bloc could now “change tack” on the issue.

“We need to face this situation politically. This time, the world did not look the other way.”

“This is continuing right now, it will continue in the coming days and weeks. Anyone who says otherwise thinks they can empty the sea with a teaspoon.”

Asked about how Europe can help Italy more, EU commissioner for migration Dimitris Avramopoulos told La Stampa newspaper that the bloc “cannot impose quotas” on the number of migrants accepted by its countries.

“We will launch a pilot project of voluntary relocation for refugees,” Mr Avramopoulos said.

The EU on Monday agreed to a 10-point plan to prevent more tragedies, including doubling its small naval mission in the Mediterranean, which replaced a far larger Italian operation.

Italy phased out its dedicated maritime search and rescue operation called “Mare Nostrum” or “Our Sea” late last year, making way for a European Union border control mission.

The EU operation, called Triton, has been criticised by humanitarian groups and Italian authorities as it has a much smaller budget and a narrower remit than Mare Nostrum.

Refugee camps

Italy’s defence minister also pressed the European Union to devise plans to stop the tide of migrants on smugglers’ boats in the Mediterranean.

Roberta Pinotti said refugee camps should be set up in countries bordering Libya and human traffickers must be targeted with military intervention.

“We know where the smugglers keep their boats, where they gather,” Ms Pinotti said. “The plans for military intervention are there.”

She was speaking a day before EU leaders hold an emergency summit in Brussels called in the wake of the shipwreck off Libya last weekend.

In the latest arrival of migrants, an Italian naval vessel docked in the Sicilian port of Augusta with 446 people on board, who had been rescued from a smugglers’ boat off the southern coast of the Italian mainland on Tuesday. The navy said 59 of the migrants are children.

Ms Pinotti said she was cautiously hopeful that the EU summit would take tangible steps to deal with the migrant crisis.

“We think it’s the moment in which Europe decides, forcefully, to have an international police operation, which will undo this band of criminals,” Ms Pinotti said.

Migrant lives

Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi also said that Italy has saved some 200,000 migrant lives at sea since the start of 2014, but its “noble, generous reaction alone isn’t enough”.

“We are asking Europe to be Europe, not just when it’s time to devise a budget.”

Mr Renzi said broad, long-term EU strategy, with wider sea patrols and a robust presence in southern Libya, would help combat “21st-century slave drivers” of migrants.

Ms Pinotti said Italy would be ready to take the helm of any military intervention if asked and as long as it is carried out as an international mission, backed by the United Nations.

“We’re ready to do our share. We’re the closest country to Libya,” she said.

The defence minister said the flow of migrants is not about to stop, saying “90 per cent are from Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia, from places where they are afraid of dying. We cannot stop them” from leaving their homelands.

Mr Renzi and Ms Pinotti had indicated that requests for asylum could be processed in refugee camps in African countries near Libya. These could include Tunisia, Niger and Sudan. Italy’s defence minister said that it would then be up to all EU countries to take their share of migrants found eligible for refugee status or asylum.

Because Italy is the first EU country the migrants set foot in, they stay in reception centres, sometimes for years, while their requests or appeals for asylum are processed.

Migrants deemed ineligible for asylum are ordered expelled, but many slip away and head to northern Europe, to reach relatives.

Reuters and PA