In her candidate statement in front of the European parliament in July 2024, the president of the European Commission rightly claimed that.¹ However, as things are, people in Libya and Tunisia are subject to persecution, abuses, and violations of their rights, especially if they are seeking refuge. Libya has never ratified the Geneva Convention, Tunisia has no nationwide asylum system. In Libya, according to the UN Fact-Finding Mission, migrants find themselves in an “abhorrent cycle of violence”.² In Tunisia, black people are rounded up, deported to desert regions and left there with no means of survival.³ At the same time, Tunisian nationals are experiencing increasing violations of their fundamental rights, with members of civil society being arrested, intimidated and harassed. With no legal pathways to safety, persecuted people in both countries have no other options than taking to the sea. With no comprehensive European rescue program ongoing in international waters for over 10 years, the central Mediterranean sea has turned into a mass grave. The European Union has all the tools necessary for saving lives at sea (see next paragraph). Yet a lack of political will perpetuates an unbearable situation. In the central Mediterranean sea, the year 2023 was, in total numbers, the deadliest since 2017. Since the end of the last comprehensive state-led rescue programme Mare Nostrum in October 2014, at least 20,750 people lost their lives.⁴ News about people dying in search of refuge reaches us on a daily basis, from all corners of Europe. The EU treats people seeking refuge as if they were criminals. Deals with autocrats, the continuous neglect of fundamental rights and an ongoing lack of accountability for violence committed by law enforcement entities are deeply troubling realities. These choices erode the values that the EU claims to uphold, and they don’t stop the loss of life at sea.

State-led Rescue Saves Lives

The operation Mare Nostrum, according to Italian Navy data, in just 10 months from 1st January two 31st October 2014, conducted 439 SAR operations and rescued over 156,000 people in distress at sea.⁵ This was financed and operated by Italy, with costs of approximately 9 million Euros per month. Its contingent on an average day consisted of one amphibious vessel, two frigates, four offshore patrol vessels, six coastal patrol vessels, as well as six helicopters and three other aircraft.⁶ Around 700 – 1000 people were employed. Over the first months of 2014, when Mare Nostrum was operational, 17 people lost their lives while trying to cross the sea. In the same time span one year later, after Mare Nostrum was discontinued, the death toll was at least 900.⁷ Italy decided to terminate the operation because no other country would contribute financially or allow rescued people to be relocated.

This example shows that a rescue program is possible, with reasonable costs far below those currently spent on border enforcement. However, financial contributions from more than only coastal states are necessary, and people rescued at sea should also be able to relocate to other countries.

An Unambiguous Mandate is Imperative

In many previous cases of shipwrecks in the Mediterranean, authorities were fully aware of a distress situation, and yet no rescue was launched. One main obstacle to saving lives at sea is the fact that in many countries, the authorities tasked with rescue activities are the same as those tasked with law enforcement and border control. This leads to situations such as the current reality in Greece, in which the Hellenic coast guard are actively engaged in endangering the lives of people instead of rescuing them. The same is true for Frontex: with EUROSUR, operated by Frontex, the EU has created a vast surveillance network which could play a key role in saving lives at sea. However, with the existing double mandate of border protection as well as respect for fundamental rights, the dilemma is usually approached in favor of the former. This is especially true in areas where responsibility can be outsourced to actors who intercept people and return them to places where their lives are at risk, violating the principle of non-refoulement.

A European rescue programme therefore needs to have the sole and unambiguous mandate for saving lives at sea with full respect for international human rights law.

Search and Rescue is a Matter of Civil Protection

Examples such as Mare Nostrum show what is feasible, and they do not stand alone. In Spain, Salvamento Marítimo is a public body with the mandate to protect lives at sea. The organisation is primarily financed by the Spanish ministry of transport. This search and rescue programme is run and operated exclusively by civilians; as such, it is free and independent of all law enforcement-related tasks which would be incompatible with its mandate. With its fleet, Salvamento Marítimo conducts search and rescue operations over an area of 1,500,000 km², covering the waters of the western Mediterranean and parts of the Atlantic Ocean.

While Salvamento Marítimo is a positive example of how civil search and rescue can be state-organised, the structure has over the last years however been under considerable pressure to withdraw from its areas of operation or engage in law-enforcement activities.

Protecting lives at sea is a matter of civil protection and safety of transport, not of law-enforcement. Search and rescue tasks should therefore be located in the political fields of civil protection or transport.

The Biggest Obstacle to a Human Reception is the Principle of First Entry

What happens once people are rescued from distress? One of the main arguments for Italy to end Mare Nostrum was that no other EU member state would allow for the people rescued at sea to legally relocate in order to apply for asylum, due to the Dublin Regulation. The principle of first entry, that requires people to apply for asylum in the country where they first entered EU territory, has proved to be an incentive for violence and an obstacle to an approach of European solidarity.But also here, Europe has shown that other pathways are possible: When the war in Ukraine started, the EU activated the Temporary Protection Mechanism for the first time. This mechanism not only allows people fleeing from Ukraine to enter and transit through European countries legally, but also to freely choose the country in which they want to find refuge. It also allows for a less bureaucratic arrival, as access to housing, health, the job market and education are facilitated. The activation of this mechanism was a full success: it drastically reduced traumatic experiences and stress for those arriving as they did not have to rely on dangerous routes; it increased people’s independence and self-determination upon arrival to their host countries; it was the biggest anti-smuggling operation in modern history through the provision of legal pathways;⁸ moreover it tempered right-wing propaganda by not adopting a securitisation perspective on migration.

The activation of the Temporary Protection Mechanism shows that an end to the principle of first entry is a key element in organising the arrival of people to Europe in a humane and cooperative way.