Following a heated meeting with the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE) on Thursday 3 October, Carola Rackete, captain of the humanitarian vessel Sea Watch, reminded the press that migration is a systemic and European issue and that attention should also be paid to migration management at land and internal borders.
"I hope that this interest will translate into some real changes", the human rights activist said, referring to the Maltese provisional agreement between Member States (see EUROPE 12333/1). "I think it is very important that civil society keeps paying attention to that (migratory) issue, but not only at the sea border but also at the land borders and what’s happening within Europe once they arrived", she said.
Ms Rackete insisted in front of MEPs, then in front of journalists, on a European solution, recalling the situation of the Member States on the southern border of the European Union, which, in recent years, have been "left alone" in the face of the migration crisis.
She called for a systematic European agreement on the distribution of refugees between Member States, an end to the criminalisation of NGOs involved in the search and rescue of migrants and refugees at sea - a practice that is widespread in Europe, she said - a complete overhaul of the Dublin Regulation and greater integration of newcomers into European societies.
The provisional agreement reached in Malta at the end of September between the Maltese, Italian, French and German Interior Ministers worried the German, in particular because of the obligation imposed on a search and rescue vessel to comply with coast guard orders. A problem, she said, if the vessel in question is in Libyan waters.
Ms Rackete also ridiculed Margaritis Schinas' portfolio dedicated to "protecting the European way of life" (see other news), asking "who protects the rest of the world from us Europeans". (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)