Brussels, 08/04/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 8 April, European and global operators of merchant ships sent an open letter to the European leaders calling on them to find viable and urgent solutions in the Mediterranean in order to prevent thousands of shipwrecks and lives lost.
Joining forces with seafarers' unions, these organisations, which include the European Community Shipowners' Associations (ECSA), the Transport Workers' Federation (ETF), the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), call on the Twenty-Eight for immediate collective action to “address the growing humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean Sea”. Since 2014, thousands of people have attempted the sea crossing from Africa and the Middle East to come to the EU in overcrowded boats and more than 3,500 people have lost their lives, the organisations stress.
In their joint letter, they call on the member states to increase the resources available for search and rescue operations at sea and to support these missions, many of which are currently conducted by merchant ships. The situation is becoming “untenable”, the federations write.
Although the associations acknowledge the work of the coastguard services of the member states, they stress that last year, merchant ships saved nearly 40,000 people, according to figures from the UN (UNHCR), and “this number is predicted to increase dramatically” in 2015, if the situation in Libya and Syria does not improve, the authors of the letter explain.
“The shipping industry fully accepts its legal responsibility to rescue anyone in distress at sea, but argues it is unacceptable that the international community is increasingly relying on merchant ships and their crews to undertake more and more large-scale rescues”. Commercial vessels may have to rescue as many as 500 people at a time, but are not equipped for this, the federations stress, calling on the member states to earmark more resources for these rescue operations.
They are also calling for this issue to be included on the agenda of the next European Council. In May, the European Commission will address the question in its forthcoming communication on migrations.
On Saturday 4 April, Italian rescuers once again came to the rescue of 1,500 migrants from Libya in distress off the coast of Lampedusa. (Solenn Paulic)