EU leaders are discussing plans to double financial sources to save lives in the Mediterranean, where hundreds of migrants have drowned in recent days, and to capture and destroy vessels that could be used for trafficking, according to a draft statement prepared for yesterday’s summit.
The latest draft statement, obtained by The Associated Press, would pledge the 28 nations to “increase search and rescue possibilities” and to “undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers.”
It said EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini would immediately start preparing an operation that would likely have a military component.
Photo: AFP
“We will take action now. Europe is declaring war on smugglers,” said EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who was in Malta to attend the funeral of 24 migrants who perished at sea.
Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi agreed.
“European Union naval operations in the Horn of Africa have successfully fought piracy — and a similar initiative must be developed to effectively fight against human trafficking in the Mediterranean,” Renzi wrote in a New York Times opinion piece. “Trafficking vessels should be put out of operation.”
A civil-military mission to do the job would face many legal hurdles and already proved controversial ahead of the summit.
The draft statement also said the nations want to “set up first a voluntary pilot project on resettlement, offering at least 5,000 places to persons qualifying for protection.”
That resettlement plan would amount to about half of the number of people who arrived in just the past week and a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands likely to arrive this year.
The draft statement also proposes cutting the time needed to process would-be migrants, which can now take up to a year before a person is processed and deemed legitimate to stay. The plan is to cut it to as little as two months.
The leaders are under great pressure to react after more than 10,000 migrants were plucked from seas between Italy and Libya in a week.
EU President Donald Tusk urged the summit “to agree on very practical measures,” including “strengthening search-and-rescue possibilities, by fighting the smugglers and by discouraging their victims from putting their lives at risk, while reinforcing solidarity.”
The leaders are also to assess a concern raised by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who called for a stronger EU search-and-rescue operation and more legal migration channels.
“We all have a moral imperative to act swiftly,” Ban said in a letter to Tusk.
EU officials say the leaders will commit to doubling the size of the European border agency effort in the Mediterranean, but those operations are designed for monitoring migrant movements, not necessarily saving lives.
Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders want a multinational rescue effort launched to help the thousands fleeing conflict and poverty from places like Syria, Eritrea and Somalia.
“The stakes are very high. The number of hours, literally, that it takes to take action will make the difference between life and death,” said Iverna McGowan, acting director of Amnesty’s European Institutions Office.
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