Several groups running rescue missions in the Mediterranean are calling for a change in the EU’s policies, which they say are partly to blame for the drownings of more than 3,000 people last year.
A 2023 decree has severely reduced the response capacity of the NGO-run civil fleet’s search-and-rescue missions, routinely putting the lives of people crossing the Mediterranean at risk.
The order, implemented by the Italian interior minister Matteo Piantedosi, states that once a rescue has been completed, civil fleets must immediately head to an assigned port of disembarkation without delay, using the most direct route. This stops additional rescues happening, the groups said.
At the same time, Italy has begun assigning rescue boats to its ports far away from where they operate, which forces them to sail hundreds of extra miles, hindering their Mediterranean patrols. According to an SOS Humanity report, in 2023, these vessels wasted 374 days making the longer journeys.
Rescue boats covered more than 150,500km (93,500 miles) – the world’s circumference is 40,000km – in one year to take “unnecessarily long” routes, the report said, saying these demands only target humanitarian boats, and not the Italian coastguard.
“This is not a coincidence, but a political tactic,” the report said.
In 2023, the Italian NGO Emergency rescued 1,077 people during 14 missions in the central Mediterranean. Nine times over the year, rather than heading to the closest port from the search-and-rescue zone – such as Sicily – Emergency was ordered to dock as far away as Tuscany, adding several additional days of sailing.
The Italian government said such measures help distribute arrivals, but NGOs argue it costs lives and pushes up fuel expenditure.
“Costs for such detours are exorbitant,” said Emanuele Nannini, who heads Emergency’s rescue missions. “We often have to pay an additional €50,000 (£43,000) per rescue in fuel alone.”
However, he said he was mostly concerned about the people the organisation wasn’t able to rescue. “Sailing to these faraway ports hinders us from doing rescue missions for at least eight days. In the meantime, people are drowning.”
Of the nearly 30,000 migrants who have died or gone missing since 2014, the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants project reported that at least 27,088 drowned.
The EU doesn’t have a coordinated search-and-rescue operation but, according to international maritime law, any coastal state aware of a boat in distress has a duty to intervene. However, this often doesn’t happen and NGOs trying to fill this gap receive little support – only additional obstacles.
“It’s our legal duty to inform all of these countries’ maritime rescue and coordination centres when we find an unseaworthy boat in distress,” said Nannini, adding that the first county to respond – whether that’s Libya, Tunisia, Malta or Italy – will coordinate the rescue.
“Italy is repeatedly the only country to reply,” he added. “The other coastal states just ignore us. Once a rescue is completed, we’re immediately assigned a port, which makes it almost impossible to perform additional rescues – unless the boats in distress are on our direct route to the port.”
The majority of boats in distress that have departed northern Africa to cross the Mediterranean are still rescued by the Italian coast guard and other government entities, with NGOs accounting for just 8% of the total rescues, according to Emergency.
Most people attempting to cross the Mediterranean make it successfully. Towards the end of last year, the EU reached a deal aiming to spread the cost and responsibility for hosting asylum seekers across all member states.
The commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said the pact would “ensure an effective European response to this European challenge” and mean “Europeans will decide who comes to the EU and who can stay, not people smugglers”.
However, human rights groups including Amnesty, Oxfam, Caritas and Save the Children have criticised the changes, saying in an open letter they would create a “cruel system”.
Italy’s rightwing government has also announced a potential deal with Albania that could result in up to 36,000 migrants a year being transferred from Italy to reception centres in Albania. Amnesty International called the proposal “unworkable, harmful and unlawful”.
Matteo de Bellis, an Amnesty migration and asylum researcher, said the deal would mean “people in distress [are] subjected to long and unnecessary transfers by sea and ending up in automatic and potentially prolonged detention, in violation of international law.”
Nannini said he was frustrated by EU policies, especially thinking about the conditions individuals were fleeing from and how much they risked along the way, from the sea crossing to detention centres in Libya.
“It seems there is political will to keep Europe closed because we don’t want to share our privilege with people who might have had less luck; who couldn’t choose where they were born,” he said. “It’s disappointing – and dangerous for those attempting to cross the Mediterranean.”
