As French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann had said on Tuesday 22 October, the vote was expected to be close and the S&D group was right to believe that victory was by no means certain. On Thursday 24 October, the European Parliament rejected by two votes (290 against, 288 for, with 36 abstentions) the draft resolution, tabled by the Social Democrats and adopted by the parliamentary committee (see EUROPE 12354/4) that called on Member States to acknowledge their responsibilities and deploy additional resources to save migrants at sea.
The Spanish Socialist rapporteur Juan Fernando Lopez Aguilar lamented the fact that “by a matter of just two votes, this Parliament is not able to send a message of solidarity" to those people who take to the seas and put their lives at risk.
The European Parliament will therefore not be sending a message on the subject, as decided by its members. In addition to the S&D resolution, to which 81 amendments had been tabled, all of the other alternative resolutions on the matter, tabled by the EPP, ID and ECR groups, were also rejected.
On Twitter, on behalf of the ID group, French MEP Nicolas Bay welcomed the outcome of the vote and the failure of French President Emmanuel Macron to impose "migrant quotas".
The resolution also called on Member States to stop criminalising aid to migrants. S&D MEPs, and the EPP MEPs in their alternative resolution, urged the European Commission in particular to finally complete its guidelines on the criminalisation of aid to migrants.
The Commission was also invited to develop a new "sustainable and permanent" strategy for the search and rescue of migrants at sea, while the EU Council was called upon to create a permanent mechanism for the redistribution of rescued migrants.
Alternative resolutions, such as the one from the ECR group, stressed the need to identify rescued migrants before they were distributed and to check in advance whether they were eligible for international protection. The resolutions also emphasised the duty to encourage third countries to prevent migrants leaving by sea and to support the Commission's work in this direction.
The NGO Oxfam condemned the "shameful" vote and pointed out that 1000 migrants had died this year in the Mediterranean.
The previous evening, Johannes Hahn, the Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy, had pointed out that, despite the human tragedy of migrant deaths, the situation had improved in recent years. He also pointed out that the EU's various maritime operations have saved 730,000 lives over the last four years. He also observed that the 'facilitation' directive, which criminalises aid for illegal immigrants, makes it possible not to punish civil society organisations that assist migrants for humanitarian reasons. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)