With Italy having noted a record number of 181,000 migrant arrivals in 2016, the European Commission proposed a series of measures on Wednesday 25 January aimed at stemming migration flows from Libya. These measures include the training of Libyan coastguards and assistance to Libya's neighbours, like Tunisia, Algeria or Egypt.
These actions, which will form the basis of discussions between the European leaders at the informal summit in Malta on Friday 3 February, will benefit from a modest envelope of €200 million for 2017.
The first task is nevertheless to avoid the shipwrecks at sea, said High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini. Nearly 5,000 people lost their lives at sea in 2016. In the central Mediterranean, 90% of migrant departures for the EU are made from Libya and these shipwrecks more often than not took place in Libyan territorial waters. "It is therefore up to the Libyan authorities to prevent these shipwrecks", as it is to dismantle the smugglers' networks, Mogherini stated.
The measures that are planned include additional envelopes of €1 million for the Seahorse programme, a regional version of the European maritime monitoring programme Eurosur, and of €2.2 million to support another Italian agreement of this type, which also focuses on the training of Libyan coastguards. Mogherini thus precluded the risk that this money, modest as it is, which has been made available for Libyan coastguards might disappear without control.
A task complicated by political situation in Libya. Mogherini, who the day before had discussed the political situation in Libya with the EU's special representative for the country, Martin Kobler, said that that cooperation with the Libyan authorities was taking place through Libya's Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj (whom she is due to meet next week) and via the Libyan local authorities, which have a direct link with the population.
On Tuesday, European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos, had nevertheless told the European Parliament's civil liberties committee that it was still difficult to find discussion partners in Libya. The Commission has tried to form contacts "but we are far from being able to say that we have succeeded in entering into discussion with them", he confirmed, underlining a situation which is "very complicated to manage" on the ground.
Mogherini, whose country of origin is very sensitive about the subject of migration, as is Malta, nevertheless said on Wednesday that the Libyan authorities had themselves asked for help with training their coastguards.
The EU also wants to strengthen Libya's southern border, with the deployment of missions and projects to support the Libyan authorities in border management and migrant protection. The EU already has an assistance mission at the border in Libya, but for questions of security this mission is currently based in Tunis.
Not replicating with Libya what has been done with Turkey. The two commissioners said on Wednesday that the Commission did not intend to duplicate with Libya the agreement that the EU had made with Turkey in March 2016 to address the migration flows in the Aegean Sea (see EUROPE 11515). The two countries are not comparable at all, and the migration flows are not the same either, the two commissioners stated.
The Commission thus cut short the speculation arising from Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who said last week in Strasbourg that he wanted to work with Libya on an agreement reproducing the same effects as those with the agreement sealed with Turkey (see EUROPE 11706).
The Commission also proposed to step up the fight against smugglers and traffickers, ensuring that the Mediterranean Seahorse network would be operational by spring 2017 in order to strengthen the border authorities of North-African countries and enable better operational cooperation between them.
The €200 million envelope also has to finance projects for the protection of migrants in Libya, for their resettlement and voluntary return to their countries of origin. This will be done through supporting cooperation between the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) and the Libyan authorities, and through helping the International Organisation for Migration (OIM) develop its assistance programme for voluntary returns from Libya to the migrants' countries of origin.
The Commission underlines strengthening the dialogue with Libya's neighbouring countries, as well between Libya and these same countries. It also wants to continue its support to the projects launched in key African countries, like those conducted in Niger as part of the targeted partnerships launched in June 2016. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic with Camille Cerise Gessant)