The EU Council officially adopted the Commission’s proposal to reinforce the European Border and Coast Guard, in a bid to respond to the challenges facing Europe in managing migration and its external borders. The European Border and Coast Guard Agency will have a standing corps of 10,000 border guards.
As the German NGO “Sea-Eye” reports they were shot in warning by Libyan-flagged speedboats to stop the volunteer rescue staff during a SAR operation, when they tried to save migrants off Libyan territorial seas. Both speedboats were flying under the Libyan flag, and one of them had a mounted machine gun towards the bow.
Italy’s new government allowed the French charity ship ‘Ocean Viking’ to bring ashore 82 migrants to the southern island of Lampedusa on Saturday, opposing to the practices of the previous far-right government, which had closed ports to migrants.
The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) published a statement on the loss of migrants trying to pass through the English Channel in small boats to reach British waters. In August alone, a record of 270 attempted to cross the Channel.
Italy gave permission to 116 rescued migrants to disembark from a coastguard ship, on 31 of July, as Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s took a step back, after five EU countries and the Church agreed to share the responsibility of looking after the migrants.
According to the Standard Club, because of the calmer, summer seas of the Mediterranean, conditions are more favourable for migrants to depart Libya in unseaworthy vessels, aspiring to reach Europe. Commercial vessels sailing through the waters around Libya, Tunisia and Malta are most likely to receive a distress call from these ships or be requested by the coast guard of any of those States to help.
The Maltese-flagged cruise ship ‘Marella Discovery’ picked up a total of 111 people, including 33 children, from a migrant boat while sailing off Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula, in the early morning hours of Sunday, the Hellenic Coastguard informed.
Carola Rackete, the German Captain of a migrant rescue ship, will sue the Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini for defamation, as her lawyer informed, increasing the tensions between the charity worker and the Minister. Carola Rackete was freed from house arrest after a judge dismissed accusations that she had endangered the lives of Italian servicemen.
Overcoming Italy’s ban, the migrant rescue boat ‘Alex’, operated by the Italian NGO Mediterranea, docked at the same quay as the Sea Watch 3, having onboard 41 migrants. Mediterranea declined the Maltese offer to dock in Valletta commenting that the people onboard weren’t in the position to sustain such a long journey.
Over 80 migrants are missing and presumed dead, while only three have survived, after a boat capsized and sank off the coast of Tunisia, in waters near the town of Zarzis. The three Malians who were rescued said that they had set out from Zuwara in Libya.
