Brussels, 28/08/2015 (Agence Europe) - The news that 50 migrants were found asphyxiated in the night of 26 to 27 August in a vessel off the coast of Libya and the discovery, on the morning of Thursday 27 August, of the bodies of nearly 70 migrants in a truck in Austria, who are believed to have suffocated, is “frankly shocking”, was the reaction of European Commissioners Frans Timmermans and Dimitris Avramopoulos, on the evening of Thursday 27 August.
In a press release, the two Commissioners spoke out against “sinister, criminal acts, carried out by smugglers with no scruples whatsoever”. In Vienna on Thursday, at a summit with the Western Balkan states, the German Chancellor also expressed her shock at these events, describing the violence as a “warning” to the EU to “get to work to resolve this problem and show solidarity”.
On Friday 28 August, the Austrian police announced that the bodies of 59 men, eight women and four children had been found in the truck, which had been found abandoned the day before on the hard shoulder of a motorway in Austria, close to the border with Hungary. Syrian travel documents were recovered, according to the Austrian police, quoted by AFP, which believes that the group was “probably” made up of Syrian refugees.
The Austrian police went on to announce that three suspects had been arrested in Hungary as part of the investigation which began on Thursday. One is a Bulgarian man of Lebanese origin and is believed to be the owner of the vehicle. The two other men - one Bulgarian and one Hungarian - are “almost certainly the drivers” of the truck, according to the police spokesperson. The Austrian authorities also announced that a European arrest warrant had been issued against four individuals in relation to the case.
Timmermans and Avramopoulos to visit the most affected countries
The Two European Commissioners stressed that “this is not an Austrian crisis. This is not an Italian, French, German or a Greek or a Hungarian crisis. This is a European crisis and it requires a collective European response”. The two officials reiterated that the Commission had tabled proposals, notably in the framework of the European migration agenda.
“The Commission put that European response on the table - from increasing our presence at sea, to cooperating in the countries of origin and transit, to clamping down on smuggling networks, making returns more effective and implementing the recently adopted common EU asylum rules whilst showing solidarity with frontline countries”, the Commissioners stressed.
Next week, they will begin a series of visits to the member states the most affected by the migration crisis, the Commission announced early on Friday afternoon. On 31 August, they will be in Calais, and then, on 4 September, in Kos, Greece, before travelling to Traiskirchen, Austria, on 7 September. A visit to Rosenheim, Germany, is also in the pipeline, but the date for this has not yet been confirmed.
In his State of the Union address in Strasbourg on 9 September, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, is also expected to make reference to new proposals to tackle the crisis. A seminar of the College of Commissioners, scheduled for Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 September, will provide the opportunity to prepare this speech, which is expected to be dominated by the subject of migration, the institution indicates.
In addition to the sordid ends these migrants found, more than 2,400 people have died in the Mediterranean Sea since the beginning of this year, according to a report released by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in mid-August. (Solenn Paulic)