20,000 lives lost in Mediterranean waters—something must be done

The EU summit that begins today is supposed to focus on the digital economy and monetary union—but there’s a good chance it will be overshadowed by concerns about immigration.

Almost 20,000 people have died attempting to cross into Europe via the southern Mediterranean over the past 20 years. Earlier this month, after yet another boat carrying undocumented migrants went down, the Maltese Prime Minister claimed that we are turning the sea into a “cemetery.” The Italian Prime Minister described it as a “tomb.”

Twenty thousand is an unbelievable figure, yet, until recently, not many people have been aware of it because it rarely makes the news outside of the areas directly affected—Cyprus, Greece, Italy and my own country, Malta; Europe’s “frontier” nations and the small islands like Malta, Sicily and Lampedusa that mark the entrance to Europe for those travelling from Africa and the Middle East. Here, residents receive regular reports of boats capsizing or running into trouble, the occupants being pulled from the sea in lengthy rescue operations. In Malta, particularly during the summer months when the weather is good and more boats attempt the crossing, barely a week passes by without such an incident appearing in the papers. The Maltese armed forces do a fantastic job of intercepting boats early as they pass into Maltese waters or evacuating them when they run into difficulties—especially given their limited resources (Malta is “not really what you might call a military superpower,” the Prime Minister noted)—but, as with the recent tragedy near Lampedusa, help sometimes arrives too late.

It’s a relief that the rest of the European media has finally woken up to the situation. If hundreds of westerners drowned off the coast of Italy it would be front page news—reports concerning the tragic sinking of the Costa Concordia, in which 32 people lost their lives, still occasionally turn up in the pages of British newspapers, almost two years after the event. But the hundreds of African migrants drowning in the sea around Italy and Malta year after year rarely get a mention. And the media attention is important, because it may provide a much-needed trigger for the EU to finally do something about this.

European policies—or a lack thereof—have too often done little to stem this ever-growing death toll. There were unconfirmed reports, for example, that three fishing boats sailed past the boat near Lampedusa on which 300 migrants lost their lives. If so, it may well be because sailors who have rescued migrants on previous occasions have found themselves prosecuted by the Italian authorities for aiding illegal immigration. Many are now reluctant to help when it’s needed. Some fishermen have also suggested that a lack of compensation for the hefty costs that can be incurred when helping migrants means they prefer to leave it to official rescue services, even though they are often first to arrive on the scene.

Those official rescue missions occasionally get delayed as countries bicker over whose responsibility it is to help. Confusion about which authorities were responsible for rescue are thought to have been a cause of the “left to die” incident in 2011. And when migrants are rescued there can be further disputes over which port they should be taken to, again making it unappealing for seamen to get involved. When a tanker saved more than 100 migrants travelling from Libya in August, for example, Malta refused to allow it to enter its waters, leaving them on the boat for three days until Italy eventually allowed them entry. As elsewhere, immigration is a politically volatile issue in Malta. Because of its location, it receives the highest proportion of asylum applications per capita in the world and has been insisting in recent months that other EU countries step in to help.

The EU’s own border agency, Frontex, which could help to reduce the burden of rescue missions on Europe’s frontier countries, sent extra support to the area around Lampedusa following this month’s disaster, but to do so it had to redirect funds from other activities. “We emptied our pockets,” it said. “Our funds for 2013 are now exhausted.”

The waters of the Mediterranean must be some of the most closely monitored on Earth—they are certainly some of the busiest. It is difficult to believe that so many hundreds of migrants drown in them each year. The European Parliament has recently approved operating rules for Eurosur, a new border surveillance system that will gradually be introduced across the EU from December. Although intended to combat and prevent irregular immigration, the system should also help to save lives.

We might hope for further developments following the EU summit taking place today and tomorrow. The Italian, Maltese and Greek Prime Ministers have all suggested that they will take the opportunity to seek an overhaul of EU asylum policies, presenting a united front to increase the pressure. The risk is that their focus will be on reducing immigration to their countries, rather than humanitarian concerns—proposals put forward by Athens and Valletta this week are more concerned with how to return migrants than how to save them. But after what we have seen this month, the EU must not waste time in coming together to create a better coordinated and clearer system for helping those in trouble in our waters.