Six hundred people drowning but no mayday call. Is this how Europe deters migrants?
When 600 people die on a summer’s night in the Mediterranean, their journey known of, or witnessed for many hours and at various times by an EU agency, the maritime authorities of two EU countries, by civil society activists and by multiple private ships and boats – a journey and a drowning effectively in plain sight – there is one obvious question: “How did that happen?”
My office has investigated the role of the EU Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, in the events surrounding the capsizing in June 2023 of the Adriana, an overcrowded fishing boat en route to Italy from Libya, with an estimated 750 people on board. We explored how that most fundamental of human rights, the right to life, survives contact with those whose responsibility it is to manage our borders and save lives at sea.
The results reveal the chasm between rhetoric and reality.
In a speech in 2020, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said, “Saving lives at sea is not optional.” Yet EU and member state policy choices have made it difficult to realise that sentiment. Claims that the possibility of being rescued acts as a “pull” factor for migrants and those who exploit them – people smugglers – have influenced those choices.
By the time the Adriana sank, proactive EU search-and-rescue operations essentially no longer existed. A joint Italian/EU rescue initiative, Mare Nostrum, had been shut down. NGOs involved in search-and-rescue initiatives risk prosecution in multiple member states.
Frontex, the EU’s largest and most heavily resourced agency, is called a border and “coastguard” agency, yet its mandate severely restricts its “search and rescue” role to search and surveillance alone. The power to act, to save lives in the specific context of a rescue at sea, lies primarily with the EU member states.
Frontex does not operate in a vacuum of ignorance vis-a-vis the past actions of some of those states. The agency has reportedly witnessed, or has been aware of, fundamental rights abuses in the context of attempts by migrants to reach Europe, but says it is restricted in how it can take this knowledge into account in its operations.
The Adriana tragedy took place shortly after Frontex’s former director resigned following an EU report exposing pushbacks of migrants by the Greek coastguard. Such pushbacks are illegal under EU and international law. Less than a year earlier, the European court of human rights had found against Greece in a case concerning another boat sinking with fatalities, and with some similarities to the Adriana tragedy. Yet Frontex has, to date, chosen not to exercise its legal right to withdraw from Greece over concerns about fundamental rights violations. This is something that we have now asked it to consider, and to make public those considerations.
Our inquiry found that for most of the period between the sighting of the Adriana and its capsizing, Frontex had to stand ineffectually by, due to the absence of authorisation by the Greek authorities to do more. The agency is legally obliged to follow the orders and directions of the coordinating national authority.
According to documents inspected by my office, repeated calls offering assistance from the Warsaw-based agency to the Greek rescue and coordination centre went unanswered. A Frontex drone, on offer to assist with the Adriana, was diverted by the Greek authorities to another incident.
When Frontex was finally allowed to return to the site of the Adriana, the boat had capsized, with many hundreds of people already dead.
Frontex had chosen not to exercise one autonomous power – to issue a mayday relay – on the grounds that the Adriana was not in “immediate danger” when initially sighted. The agency acted in accordance with the legal rules and procedures, but an examination of those rules shows that they cannot give full effect to the EU’s commitment to saving migrant lives, despite the EU repeatedly stating that saving lives is an EU priority.
Legal changes at EU level would be needed to allow Frontex to act on its own initiative in search-and-rescue situations and to rebalance the division of responsibilities between the EU and its member states.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the European Commission called for all of the facts to be established, but there is no single accountability mechanism to do so. The Greek ombudsman and the Greek naval court are separately investigating the actions of the coastguard, the latter having declined to initiate an internal investigation.
In light of the enormous number of deaths in the Mediterranean in recent years, I am calling on the EU to initiate a commission of inquiry into the factors that have caused this humanitarian crisis.
As the EU commissioner for home affairs, Ylva Johansson, toldthe European parliament: “Above the Adriana, the waters are now silent, no tombstones, no marker, nothing to remember the names. Let our actions be our monument.”
Emily O’Reilly is the European ombudsman
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