EU holds migrant boat crisis talks as more deaths reported
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Version 0 of 1. Interior ministers and senior police officials from the 28 countries of the European Union are rushing to Luxembourg for emergency talks on how to respond to the migrant boat tragedies in the Mediterranean. The meeting comes as reports in Italy suggested the death toll from the weekend capsizing of a fishing vessel packed with migrants could reach 950 – an increase on the 700 deaths reported on Sunday – and as at least 23 migrants were feared dead in separate incidents on Monday. The interior ministers are to join their countries’ top diplomats on Monday afternoon in what was to have been a routine meeting of EU foreign ministers. The meeting has been transformed into a crisis session amid a clamour for action to stem the loss of life in the Mediterranean. EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini demanded immediate action. “With this latest tragedy … we have no more excuses, the EU has no more excuses, the member states have no more excuses,” she said. “The main issue here is to build a common sense of European responsibility, knowing that there is no easy solution.” Related: Europe’s worsening migrant crisis – the Guardian briefing Malta is preparing to bury the bodies of 24 migrants killed in the weekend’s sinking, which looks likely to be the worst of its kind in the Mediterranean. The Italian coastguard dropped off the bodies before heading to Sicily with 28 survivors. Gen Antonino Iraso of the Italian border police said those small numbers suggest that hundreds may have been locked in the hold, because with so much weight down below, the boat would “surely” have sunk. Malta’s prime minister, Joseph Muscat, said survivors spoke of “haunting experiences”. One survivor from Bangladesh has told investigators he believed there were about 950 people on board the ship. That report has not been confirmed. Coastguard officials said the vessel probably overturned when the migrants caught sight of a Portuguese ship and all moved to the same side of their boat. The Italian coastguard has said rescue operations would continue as long as it believed it would still be possible to find survivors. Commercial vessels and cargo ships – which helped save 40,000 migrants last year – have also been asked to support the mission. On Monday the International Organisation for Migration said it received a distress call from a boat carrying 300 people in international waters, and a boat ran aground off the Greek island of Rhodes. In the former incident, the caller said the boat was sinking and there had been about 20 fatalities. In the latter, the Greek coastguard said at least three people had died. Video footage showed a large, wooden double-masted boat, packed with people, just metres from the land. The vessel rocked wildly in the waves and passengers were seen jumping into the sea and swimming towards land. Libyan smugglers are telling migrants to remain stationary during trips to Europe, in full knowledge that even small movements of such overpacked boats could overbalance and capsize the vessels. According to a Libyan fisherman from a major smuggling hub in west Libya, the ships that capsized with catastrophic effect in recent days did so because migrants ignored instructions to stay put once on board. Related: It is our antipathy towards migrants that kills in the Mediterranean “When they leave, they are told to stay where they’re seated,” said the fisherman. “Then at daybreak they realise they’re in the midst of the ocean, they start to shift around, and then the boat, which can only withstand a certain number of tons, has its balance shifted. It starts to take on water and begins to sink.” Before Sunday’s disaster, the IOM estimated that about 20,000 migrants had reached the Italian coast this year, and 900 had died. There will be tough words in Luxembourg about clamping down on the criminal networks of people-traffickers in Libya and elsewhere in north Africa and about the need to tackle the roots of the migration epidemic at source in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. “We should put the blame squarely with the criminal human traffickers who are the ones managing, promoting and selling this trade, this trade in human life,” said the British prime minister, David Cameron. “We are doing everything we can to try and stop them.” He advocated a comprehensive approach: “You have got to deal with the instability in the countries concerned, you have got to go after the human traffickers and the criminals that are running this trade. You have got to make sure, yes there is an element of search and rescue, but that can only be one part of this.” European governments, deeply divided over how to respond, appear impotent in the face of the surge of migrants risking their lives to reach European shores, and are reluctant to relax immigration policies for fear of boosting support at home for anti-immigrant parties doing well in many parts of the union. The populist anti-immigrant Finns party, formerly the True Finns, performed strongly in general elections on Sunday, coming second and are likely to be part of the new government in Helsinki. Three weeks before Britain’s election, Theresa May, the home secretary, will be unlikely to risk any policy shifts that might bolster Nigel Farage and his anti-immigration UK Independence party. Thomas de Maizière, the German interior minister and chancellor Angela Merkel’s former chief of staff, also takes a hard line, arguing, like May, that more ambitious European search-and-rescue missions in the Mediterranean will act as a “pull factor”, encouraging smugglers to send more migrants to sea in unsafe, packed vessels. Related: EU ending migrant rescue missions has not curbed demand, say smugglers The national governments of Europe, as opposed to the EU institutions in Brussels, are responsible almost entirely for immigration policy and jealously guard their national prerogatives. Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European commissioner responsible for migration issues, will attend the Luxembourg meeting. He is to unveil a new EU policy blueprint next month, but power rests overwhelmingly in national capitals. While the ministers are unlikely to agree on any swift, concerted action to mitigate the problem, the EU’s failure to mount effective naval patrols charged with saving lives is being loudly condemned as a scandal. Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung at the weekend denounced the EU as a ”union of murderers”, accepting the deaths of refugees in the hope of discouraging other refugees from following them. The crisis has put the spotlight on the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, who on Sunday issued a harsh critique of his European partners for not assisting Italy as it tries to cope with the influx of migrants. The centre-left politician called the traffickers the “slave drivers” of the 21st century. He has insisted for months that the solution to the problem was not increasing patrols at sea, but instead focusing international efforts on returning stability to Libya. Related: Risking death in the Mediterranean: the least bad option for so many migrants “It is unthinkable that in the face of such a tragedy, there isn’t the feeling of solidarity which Europe has shown in other instances,” he said. “We ask not to be left alone, not so much when it comes to emergencies at sea, but to stop the trafficking of human beings.” The issue has taken centre stage in Italy at a difficult moment for the prime minister, who is trying to pass controversial government reforms and facing intense scrutiny from political rivals on the right who say that Renzi has not acted with enough resolve to stem the tide of incoming migrants. “Waves of immigrants are a harsh reminder of how shaky Italy’s neighbourhood has become lately,” said Francesco Galietti, an analyst at Policy Sonar in Rome. “Renzi has travelled quite extensively to the Gulf and Egypt, but has not found a way to stem the flow of immigrants. This is a major source of problems.” Gianni Pittella, the Italian who is the floor leader of the social democrats in the European parliament, accused EU governments of hypocrisy. He said: “The deafening silence of so many member states is an embarrassment, no longer acceptable.” Particular criticism is being directed at the EU’s lacklustre maritime patrols in the Mediterranean, the Triton mission under the EU’s Frontex border controls agency. It is small, comprising one helicopter, one aircraft, and nine vessels, has no search-and-rescue mandate, and merely patrols Italian territorial waters. It replaced, at a fraction of the cost, a much more ambitious and effective Italian navy operation, Mare Nostrum, last year. Frontex’s annual budget is a paltry €90m (£65m). The IOM said the Triton mission had to be expanded into a proper search-and-rescue operation, noting how European naval operations off the Horn of Africa in recent years had succeeded in combatting the Somali piracy plague. It also called for swift action from the European Union following “the worst tragedy in living memory involving migrants crossing the Mediterranean from north Africa”. The Latvian government, which currently holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency, called for “speedy action to prevent further loss of life”, and urged governments to commit greater resources for Frontex. “Options should be explored for setting up a full-fledged search-and-rescue operation of the EU,” said Rihards Kozlovskis, the Latvian interior minister. “The EU is standing by with arms crossed while hundreds die off its shores,” said Judith Sutherland, the deputy Europe director at Human Rights Watch. “These deaths might well have been prevented if the EU had launched a genuine search-and-rescue effort.” |