ITALY-MIGRANTS/FRONTEX-PATROL EU border force braces for record year of Mediterranean migration

Record ID: 348874

  • Title: ITALY-MIGRANTS/FRONTEX-PATROL EU border force braces for record year of Mediterranean migration
  • Date: 20th March 2015
  • Summary: NAUTICAL CHART
  • Embargoed: 4th April 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVABWFWZOB70AJUV90JBW6WROAOY
  • Story Text: With the number of Mediterranean boat migrants surging already this year, the European Union's largest ever border operation is bracing for a record year of arrivals, especially as the summer months bring calmer waters between Italy and Libya.
    Earlier this week off the eastern coast of Sicily, the 18-member crew of the Icelandic coast guard vessel Tyr -- named after a Nordic god of war -- conducted rescue drills in seas more familiar to Greek mythology, preparing for the worst.
    Though the United Nations refugee agency has criticised the mission, known as Triton, because its mandate is border control and not search and rescue, which keeps patrols near the Italian coast, the EU border agency Frontex says it is saving lives and is warning about a flood of migrants that could hit Italian shores.
    "We are seeing, at the end of last year and also this year large numbers of migrants arriving in Italy in winter," Frontex spokeswoman Ewa Moncure told Reuters on the bridge of the Tyr.
    "In the previous years we have not seen thousands of migrants departing in winter time, when the weather is usually bad. We are also seeing this year less Syrians arriving from Libya, primarily the migrants are African," she said.
    Answering accusations that the Frontex mission was not doing enough to save migrants in distress, Moncure said:
    "We participate in a lot of search and rescue operations that take place far from the Italian shore, usually about 40 nautical miles north of Libya."
    Italy, citing cost concerns, discontinued its much larger Mare Nostrum search-and-rescue mission in November, when Triton began. Since then, Italy has overseen the retrieval of 200 boats carrying almost 25,000 migrants, with Triton vessels helping in about a third of the rescues.
    Agencies such as Save the Children have said more needs to be done and the current monitoring of borders does not go far enough.
    "Since Mare Nostrum stopped and since Frontex started you have seen a rise in the numbers of refugees coming, even though most of them knowing that Mare Nostrum was not in place and that they could not count on being saved after leaving Libya for instance," said Save the Children spokesman Hedinn Halldorsson.
    "Frontex is only monitoring 30 nautical miles from the borders from the south of Italy so the argument simply doesn't hold. Less monitoring has meant basically more refugees coming in," he said.
    About 170,000 migrants entered the EU through Italy last year by way of the dangerous sea crossing organised by human traffickers, mostly in Libya, while more than 3,000 perished. During the first two months of this year, arrivals were up 43 percent versus the same period of 2014.
    But Frontex will have fewer resources for a bigger job. The Triton monthly budget is 2.9 million euros, a third of Mare Nostrum's. The Tyr is one of Triton's two large vessels made for sailing the open sea, whereas Mare Nostrum had five, including one with a wet dock and room to shelter thousands of migrants.
    The governments of southern EU countries -- including Italy, Greece and Spain -- have repeatedly criticised the failure of the 28-nation bloc to devote more attention and resources to the growing immigration crisis.
    To increase solidarity, the European Commission has said it will present a "migration agenda" in May, when good weather begins to boost the flow of migrants and refugees, many of whom are fleeing civil war in Syria or forced military conscription in Eritrea.
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