Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

IMMIGRATION

Scores of migrants feared missing off Libya: IOM

Scores of migrants were feared missing off the Libyan coast, the IOM said Saturday after the Italian navy flew three survivors to the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.

Published: 20 January 2019 11:28 CET
Scores of migrants feared missing off Libya: IOM
A Sea Watch 3 crew member marks with spray paint a rubber boat that the NGO destroyed after rescuing 47 migrants that were onboard. Photo: AFP

The International Organization for Migration said the three, who were suffering from hypothermia, had reported that there were initially 120 people on board their inflatable boat.

That meant “there would be 117 missing, including 10 women and a 10-month-old baby,” IOM Italia said in comments posted on Twitter.

Earlier the Italian navy said that three migrants had died and about 15 remained missing, after it staged a rescue operation in the Mediterranean.

The navy intervened on Friday and a helicopter rescued the three people, one plucked from the sea and two from life rafts dropped by an air force plane, Admiral Fabio Agostini said.

Air force pilots had “spotted a dinghy in distress carrying about 20 people,” he told Italian television in an interview tweeted by the navy.

“Three corpses were seen floating in the water during the operation,” he said, adding that the rescuers had been unable to locate the dinghy.

The IOM said that most of the migrants were from Cameroon, Gambia, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Sudan.

The three survivors said they had been in the sea for about three hours before help arrived.

The German charity group Sea Watch said Saturday that it had rescued 47 migrants from an inflatable boat, but it was not known if they belonged to the same group.

A Red Crescent spokesman meanwhile said 16 bodies had been found on the beaches of the Libyan city of Sirte between January 2nd and 15th.

According to the IOM, 83 people have died so far this year trying to cross the Mediterranean.

It said the number of migrants and refugees landing on European shores had almost doubled in the first 16 days of this year to 4,216 against 2,365 over the same period in 2018.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said “we cannot turn a blind eye to the high numbers of people dying on Europe's doorstep”.

Italy's far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, in a Facebook video, said “the shipwrecks are back in the Mediterranean. The boats are leaving again and we are counting the dead”.

But Salvini insisted there was no question of reconsidering his decision to ban access to Italian ports to NGOs, which he accused of playing the people smugglers' game.

READ ALSO: Residents help group of 50 migrants to shore in southern Italy 

POLITICS

How the EU aims to reform border-free Schengen area

European countries agreed on Thursday to push towards a long-stalled reform of the bloc's migration system, urging tighter control of external borders and better burden-sharing when it comes to asylum-seekers.

Published: 4 February 2022 10:09 CET
How the EU aims to reform border-free Schengen area
European interior ministers met in the northern French city of tourcoing, where president Emmanuel Macron gave a speech. Photo: Yoat Valat/AFP

The EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson, speaking after a meeting of European interior ministers, said she welcomed what she saw as new momentum on the issue.

In a reflection of the deep-rooted divisions on the issue, France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin – whose country holds the rotating EU presidency – said the process would be “gradual”, and welcomed what he said was unanimous backing.

EU countries backed a proposal from French President Emmanuel Macron to create a council guiding policy in the Schengen area, the passport-free zone used by most EU countries and some affiliated nations such as Switzerland and Norway.

Schengen council

Speaking before the meeting, Macron said the “Schengen Council” would evaluate how the area was working but would also take joint decisions and facilitate coordination in times of crisis.

“This council can become the face of a strong, protective Europe that is comfortable with controlling its borders and therefore its destiny,” he said.

The first meeting is scheduled to take place on March 3rd in Brussels.

A statement released after the meeting said: “On this occasion, they will establish a set of indicators allowing for real time evaluation of the situation at our borders, and, with an aim to be able to respond to any difficulty, will continue their discussions on implementing new tools for solidarity at the external borders.”

Step by step

The statement also confirmed EU countries agreed to take a step-by-step approach on plans for reforming the EU’s asylum rules.

“The ministers also discussed the issues of asylum and immigration,” it read.

“They expressed their support for the phased approach, step by step, put forward by the French Presidency to make headway on these complex negotiations.

“On this basis, the Council will work over the coming weeks to define a first step of the reform of the European immigration and asylum system, which will fully respect the balance between the requirements of responsibility and solidarity.”

A planned overhaul of EU migration policy has so far foundered on the refusal of countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia to accept a sharing out of asylum-seekers across the bloc.

That forces countries on the EU’s outer southern rim – Italy, Greece, Malta and Spain – to take responsibility for handling irregular migrants, many of whom are intent on making their way to Europe’s wealthier northern nations.

France is pushing for member states to commit to reinforcing the EU’s external borders by recording the details of every foreign arrival and improving vetting procedures.

It also wants recalcitrant EU countries to financially help out the ones on the frontline of migration flows if they do not take in asylum-seekers themselves.

Johansson was critical of the fact that, last year, “45,000 irregular arrivals” were not entered into the common Eurodac database containing the fingerprints of migrants and asylum-seekers.

Earlier, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser suggested her country, France and others could form a “coalition of the willing” to take in asylum-seekers even if no bloc-wide agreement was struck to share them across member states.

She noted that Macron spoke of a dozen countries in that grouping, but added that was probably “very optimistic”.

Luxembourg’s foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, hailed what he said was “a less negative atmosphere” in Thursday’s meeting compared to previous talks.

But he cautioned that “we cannot let a few countries do their EU duty… while others look away”.

France is now working on reconciling positions with the aim of presenting propositions at a March 3rd meeting on European affairs.

SHOW COMMENTS