In Strasbourg on Tuesday 4 July, the European Commission presented the outlines of the European action plan to provide Italy with rapid relief in dealing with migration flows and preventing departures from Libya, to be discussed by the EU home affairs ministers in Tallinn on Thursday 6 July.
The First Vice-President of the Commission, Frans Timmermans, has detailed a series of measures under the responsibility of the Commission, the member states and Italy. With more than 100,000 people crossing the Mediterranean since January 2016 and nearly 85,000 of them ending up in Italy, according to the figures of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Rome recently appealed to its European partners for help and also threatened to close off access to its ports for NGO vessels rescuing migrants at sea.
Amongst other things, these measures consist of reinforcing the capacities of the Libyan authorities. The Commission is planning to finance a project in association with Italy for €46 million. It hopes to set up a fully operational coordination and rescue centre in Libya, with a view to developing the search and rescue at sea activities of the Libyan coast guard. For Rome, the Commission intends to mobilise a further envelope of €35 million immediately.
It also hopes to relaunch the exercise of resettling refugees by launching and financing a programme with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, offering places to individuals currently in Libya, Egypt, Niger, Ethiopia and Sudan. Although Timmermans did not put forward any resettlement figures, he called on all member states to take part.
Other measures include working with Libya to reinforce controls on the southern border, in cooperation with the countries of the G5 Sahel and the member states. Work must also be speeded up to conclude readmission agreements (or equivalent mechanisms) with the countries of origin and of transit. The Commission also hopes to continue to support the policy of voluntary returns of migrants reaching Libya or Niger, a policy it will be working with the IOM, amongst others, to implement.
For their part, the member states will be called upon to make a greater commitment to the African trust fund, speed up relocations of asylum seekers from Italy, but also accelerate discussions on reform of the Dublin regulation, to be discussed in Tallinn on Thursday. The member states should also mobilise their capacity to reinforce returns of migrants residing illegally from Italy.
Commission asks Rome to create 3,000 emergency places
Italy has been called upon to draw up a code of conduct for NGOs with the Commission and in dialogue with the NGOs, but this move has already come under a great deal of fire. It must also step up its efforts to register asylum seekers who qualify for relocation, registering all Eritreans present on its territory as a matter of urgency, and to allow the relocation of unaccompanied minors.
It has also been asked to create additional posting places in migration hotspots and hosting centres. At least 3000 places must be created as a matter of urgency.
As for the code of conduct in itself, the First Vice-President said that it should serve to remove all misunderstandings about the actual activities of NGOs, which have attracted witchhunts and even legal proceedings regarding their alleged links to networks of smugglers.
Stressing that he believes NGOs act solely for humanitarian reasons, Timmermans said that the code of conduct will be useful in clarifying the missions of various players in rescue operations, to avoid any problems and “negative factors”, but did not go into details on these negative factors.
The First Vice-President seemed to disregard a suggestion made that morning in Brussels by the regional director of the IOM Bureau, Eugenio Ambrosi, that the EU should offer alternative solutions to so-called economic migrants unable to claim asylum as defined in the EU. Europe will soon need this workforce that is keen to work, Ambrosi said. Timmermans stressed that all persons who are not eligible for international protection in the EU should be returned to their countries of origin.
At a press briefing on Tuesday morning, the HCR and IOM also urged the Commission to start real and serious work to tackle smugglers, on which they feel too little is being done at the moment, that the EU could do more and has information to help take down these networks, the two organisations argued.
As regards reinforcing search and rescue at sea operations by the Libyan coast guard, consideration should also be given to creating a similar regime in the desert, “where more people probably die than in in the Mediterranean Sea”, said Vincent Cochetel, Special Envoy of the UN High Commission for Refugees for the central Mediterranean route. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)