A perilous sea route from eastern Libya to Europe taken by thousands of migrants, including hundreds involved in a fatal shipwreck Wednesday, has seen an increase of vessels carrying migrants by nearly 600 percent in 2023 alone, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson told POLITICO.
“They have not been sent to the EU, they have been sent to death,” she said.
In what the U.N migration agency IOM called “one of the biggest tragedies in the Mediterranean,” the overcrowded fishing boat sank while attempting to reach Italy. It refused help from a Greek coast guard boat, Greek authorities said.
The boat sank just days after EU interior ministers reached a deal to unblock key issues in long-disputed migration reform. At least 79 people died in the fatal wreck but a joint statement from the IOM and the U.N.’s refugee agency, UNHCR, estimated hundreds are dead and missing.
Johansson skirted a question about whether Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, would send a search and rescue operation in the area to prevent further losses.
Frontex said its aircraft spotted the boat Tuesday and warned Greece and Italy. Its head, Hans Leijtens, flew to Greece to “better understand what happened,” he said in a tweet.
“Search and rescue is, for sure, extremely important” Johansson said. She stressed, though, the Commission is working to dry out this route. For now, there is no reason to think that Rome or Athens have any responsibility, Johansson said, adding that the question has been raised too early to be answered. “But I have no indications that member states have not done enough,” she said.
EU interior ministers reached a deal last week on two key migration issues the bloc has not agreed on since the surge of the 2015 migration crisis. Johansson called the deal the product of “a two and a half year marathon,” when she put the reform plan on the table in September 2020. She denied interpretations by some media and politicians the deal will make it easier for the bloc to outsource its migration policy to neighboring countries. She argued this “is not part of the agreement from the Council.”
While EU countries worked to unblock the migration discussion over the years, the death toll rose. According to the IOM, since 2014, more than 27,000 migrants have gone missing in the Mediterranean. As most recently as this past February, 94 bodies of dead migrants were found off the Italian coast after a boat departing Turkey capsized.
Many asylum seekers using this route are from Pakistan and Egypt, Johansson said, both countries the EU is working with to find legal pathways for labor migration.
She explained that smugglers have found a new way to operate by flying in migrants to Benghazi, the largest city in Eastern Libya, before putting them on overcrowded fishing boats.
“I think we should explore the possibility to reach out also to the airline companies and see what can be done together with them” she said.
What is key, Johansson said, is to prevent other migrants from taking that route and opening other legal avenues for migrants to reach the EU.
“Every time you see this happen, of course it hurts your heart,” Johansson added.
And while she was moved by the terrible incident the day before, she addressed the task at hand.
“My first priority is always to save lives,” she said.
