Four days after up to 900 desperate people drowned trying to reach Europe from Libya, EU leaders agreed on Thursday to triple its naval search mission in the Mediterranean, restoring its funding to last year’s level.
Critics called it a face-saving operation that did not go far enough to emulate an Italian rescue mission abandoned six months ago for want of EU support, and divisions remained over longer-term proposals, ranging from dealing with people smugglers and African migrant camps to how to redistribute asylum seekers around 28 nations where anti-immigrant parties are on the rise.
However, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who had called for the emergency summit in Brussels after the deadly sinking of a crowded vessel on Sunday pierced many Europeans’ indifference to the fate of unwelcome migrants, called it “a big step forward for Europe.”
Photo: EPA
Countries, including Britain, which will send the Royal Navy’s helicopter-carrying flagship, pledged aircraft and boats to Operation Triton, an EU frontier operation off Italy. Funding for a similar operation off Greece was also to be increased.
Officials said the difference could be felt within days. Italy warned that, after nearly 2,000 deaths so far this year out of nearly 40,000 people making the crossing, a summer season was starting that could push total arrivals on its shores this year to 200,000, an increase of 30,000 over last year.
“We face a difficult summer,” said the summit chairman, European Council President Donald Tusk.
He took pains to warn that there would be no quick fix for problems that saw more than 600,000 people seek asylum in the EU last year.
Tripling annual funding to 120 million euros (US$130 million) puts Triton in line with Italy’s Mare Nostrum mission. That rescued 100,000 people last year, but was criticized by Germany, Britain and others for attracting more people to put to sea in leaky craft supplied by profiteering gangs of traffickers.
In the face of public outrage, governments have muted those concerns about a “pull factor” and launched what one EU official said was a Mare Nostrum Mark II, ready to roam the high seas — although human rights groups worry its border defense mandate may mean ships stay too far from the trouble spots off Libya.
Among 17 proposals in a summit communique, leaders agreed to “undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers.”
It is unclear how that may be achieved and several leaders said they would need a UN mandate in the absence of a viable Libyan government.
The group that controls Libya’s coastal capital, Tripoli, which is not recognized internationally, said it would “confront” any such EU attacks. Veto-wielding Russia, at daggers drawn with the EU over Ukraine, could block a mandate.
Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres criticized the focus by world leaders on trying to quell Libyan people traffickers as they once did Somalian pirates.
“We are amazed to see that the huge means and resources allocated to declaring war on smugglers are not equally invested in saving lives,” said Aurelie Ponthieu, a humanitarian adviser.
“Focusing on keeping people out by cutting their only existing routes is only going to push people fleeing for their lives to find other routes, potentially even more dangerous,” Ponthieu said.
Leaders said they would aim for long-term solutions, such as easing poverty and war in the Middle East and Africa, giving people in need a chance to ask for asylum before reaching Europe and opening possible legal routes to migration for some.
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