Every year hundreds die trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea, now rescue crews worry European authorities are making it harder to save lives
Refugee and migrant rescue groups fear that European authorities are increasingly using maritime safety regulations to block ships from carrying out search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
The Open Arms was barred from leaving Porto Empedocle, a small city on the southern coast of Sicily, “until the technical and operational irregularities detected during the inspection have been corrected”, the Italian coast guard said. Around 15 migrants jumped off the ship, prompting the Spanish authorities to send a ship to collect them.It remains unclear if the Open Arms addressed these “anomalies”, or was allowed to leave the port. Neither the charity nor the Italian Coast Guard responded to requests for comment. Haidi Sadik, the spokesperson for Sea-Watch, another migrant rescue NGO which flies a Dutch flag, said that country’s Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management “imposed a new safety regulation in April”.
She claimed: “[The regulations are] strict and unnecessary … It wasn’t a proper legislative change. It was just a ministry imposing this on us.” On August 1, an appeals courtthat the new regulations’ “negative consequences of omitting a transitional period for the more stringent safety regulations on Sea-Watch’s ship, namely that people may drown due to limited rescue capacity in the Mediterranean Sea, outweigh” their purpose, according to a statement by Sea-Watch following the ruling.
The “policy change was one of the outcomes of the EU Summit on Migration in June 2018”, Sea-Watch said, citing documents which showed conversations about the charity’s search and rescue efforts began about a week before the event started.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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