European Union leaders have committed extra ships, planes and helicopters to save lives in the Mediterranean at an emergency summit convened after hundreds of migrants drowned in a single incident last weekend.
The member states agreed to triple the funds for Frontex, the EU’s border operation that patrols the Mediterranean and could be called on for emergency rescues, a figure which could reach about €9 million a month.
The leaders also agreed to lay the groundwork for military action against traffickers.
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The measures were announced by German chancellor Angela Merkel after the summit in Brussels.
European Council president Donald Tusk confirmed the bloc was going to look into how to seek and destroy vessels that could be used by smugglers, step up efforts to stop people reaching Libya, streamline visa and asylum processing and the returning of failed asylum seekers to their home countries.
Ms Merkel said: “We want to move quickly. So we will triple the financial resources for the relevant missions of Frontex, clearly improve them.”
Germany and France pledged two ships to help tackle the migration crisis, while Britain committed three to move into the Mediterranean. Other member states also lined up more vessels and helicopters that could be used to rescue migrants, officials said.
Leaders also assigned EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to line up the diplomatic options that would allow EU military to strike against the boats used by traffickers.
An earlier draft statement at the summit pledged the 28 nations to double their spending on the issue to save lives, “increase search and rescue possibilities” and to “undertake systematic efforts to identify, capture and destroy vessels before they are used by traffickers”.
The draft statement also called for “a first voluntary pilot project on resettlement, offering at least 5,000 places to persons qualifying for protection”.
European Union leaders had been expected to reverse a cutback in rescue operations in the Mediterranean at the summit, to try to prevent record numbers of people drowning as they try to flee war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.
The emergency summit in Brussels was called after up to 900 migrants died in the sea after a single boat sank on Sunday.
‘Saving lives’
German chancellor Angela Merkel said on arrival at the summit that Europe’s values and credibility in the rest of the world were on the line “and so the issue today is of the greatest importance, in terms of saving human lives”.
UK prime minister David Cameron, fighting an election against anti-immigration populists, had pledged his navy's helicopter-carrying flagship and two other vessels to an operation he previously refused to support for fear of tempting more migrants to attempt the sea passage.
But he stressed that those migrants picked up would not automatically be given refuge in Britain and would mostly be delivered to Italy, whose prime minister, Matteo Renzi, said he was optimistic that his European allies would no longer let Rome struggle alone.
German army sources told the DPA news agency that Berlin would offer to send the troop supply ship Berlin, as well as the frigates Karlsruhe and Hessen, toward Italy. The ships currently participate in the anti-piracy operation Atalanta at the Horn of Africa and could be in the Mediterranean within five days.
Belgium had also committed a navy ship.
European Council president Donald Tusk said as he arrived to chair the summit that no one had any illusions the leaders could resolve the problems immediately. “We cannot. The real causes are war, instability and poverty in the whole region.”
There were just 28 survivors from Sunday's disaster, which appeared to be the worst ever among migrants fleeing by sea to Europe from north Africa.
Italy shut down a mission that saved the lives of more than 100,000 migrants last year because other EU countries refused to pay for it. It was replaced with a smaller EU scheme whose main focus is to patrol the bloc’s borders, after countries argued that saving migrants encouraged more to come.
The United Nations earlier criticised the European response so far and urged it to do more: "The European Union response needs to go beyond the present minimalist approach . . . which focuses primarily on stemming the arrival of migrants and refugees on its shores."
Significant obstacles
Proposals such as military action in Libya, the setting up of “reception centres” abroad or even the redistribution of refugees around EU states face significant obstacles.
A resettlement plan for 5,000 refugees would amount to about half of the number which arrived in the last week, and a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands likely to arrive this year.
There is also an existing divide in terms of asylum rates in EU member states. Countries like Germany, Sweden, France and Italy already deal with a disproportionate number of asylum requests, while requests are lower in eastern states.
"This is a political demonstration," an EU diplomat said, comparing it to EU efforts to present a programme to counter terrorism after January's Islamist attack on Paris newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
“There’s a phenomenon that is not at all new, but there’s a dramatic event and we need to look at our strategy.”
Operation Triton
Operation Triton, in which Frontex has been overseeing about seven ships off the Italian coast with a monthly budget of €2.9 million, is to get more ships and money under the proposals.
An Italian operation, Mare Nostrum, ended six months ago after critics, notably the UK and Germany, said it was drawing more would-be migrants by raising the chances of being rescued.
Italy now estimates as many as 200,000 people will cross to its shores this year, up from about 170,000 reported by the International Organisation for Migration for last year.
EU officials and diplomats said differences among the states meant the legal mandate of Operation Triton would not be changed to make it explicitly intended to search for and rescue migrants close to the Libyan coast.
Diplomats said some states insisted that action against traffickers would need a UN Security Council mandate that the EU was unlikely to get in the middle of its confrontation with veto-holding Russia.
The group which controls the part of Libya around Tripoli also said it would “confront” any such EU military action against its coastline.
Efforts to dissuade people trying to reach Libya, where the collapse of authority after the EU-backed overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 has made it a magnet for migrants, would focus on helping Libya's neighbours to control their borders with it.
However, Amnesty International called such proposals "woefully inadequate and shameful", saying they would not end a spiral that has seen nearly 2,000 people lost at sea this year.
Malta funeral
An imam and a bishop led a poignant inter-faith funeral service on Malta on Thursday for 24 drowned migrants, the only victims whose bodies were recovered from the Mediterranean in the weekend shipwreck that shocked Europe.
The dead were picked up by the Italian vessel Gregoretti and brought to Malta on Monday after their vessel capsized and sank early on Sunday morning. As many as 900 people are believed to have died.
Twenty-eight survivors were taken to Italy. The overwhelming majority of victims were never found, locked below decks and sinking along with the boat. The captain has been arrested in Italy on suspicion of homicide, people smuggling and causing a shipwreck.
Initial enquiries appeared to confirm the worst suspicions of the rescue service: that the small overcrowded fishing vessel had three “levels” with 250 women and 50 children locked into the lowest level; that an unknown number of men were locked into level two; and that the captain and a smaller number of men were up on deck. Only some of those who were on deck appear to have survived.
The disaster brought the death toll so far this year to around 1,800 desperate migrants drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to cross, and prompted the EU to summon leaders of its 28 member states for an emergency summit on Thursday.
European leaders were expected to reverse a decision they took last year to halt search and rescue efforts at sea, which human rights groups say led inevitably to the deaths.
The funeral ceremony in the island state, the EU’s smallest country, was conducted under a large tent just outside the morgue of the Mater Dei Hospital in Malta’s capital Valetta.
Maltese president Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, prime minister Joseph Muscat, the EU Commissioner for Migration and ministers from Italy and Greece watched as coffins of the 24 unidentified men, including four teenagers, were carried by soldiers. The route was lined by bouquets of flowers which over the past days were sent to the morgue by Maltese.
Imam Mohammed El Sadi thanked the Maltese and Italian authorities for seeking to save the migrants. What had happened, he said, should raise awareness of the migrants’ plight.
Bishop Mario Grech called for humanitarian action motivated by love, rather than the law.
“We can continue to read out the laws like lawyers do, but that is not enough. The way of the law, the way of justice should open itself to the way of love.”
The migrants were to be taken in groups of six to be buried at Malta’s Addolorata Cemetery.
A memorial service was held on Wednesday, with the hospital morgue blanketed with flowers sent by local residents. A note attached to one bouquet read: “RIP brothers and sisters, you matter”.
“We proceeded out at sea with the hope of course to save as many people as we could. But unfortunately we didn’t arrive quite in time to save the migrants,” said visibly moved Maltese navy lieutenant Mark Merceica, who attended the memorial.
“We were really disappointed, and you could feel this through the entire crew, we were really hoping to arrive in time.”
Reuters and PA