The at least 79 migrants killed in the recent shipwreck of a fishing boat in the Ionian Sea, to which hundreds of missing persons must be added -among them, a large number of children and mothers crowded into the hold of the vessel-, add to the tens of thousands of victims that make the Mediterranean the most dangerous border in the world. The tragic sinking of the ship that sailed from the port of Tobruk, in Libya, has once again moved public opinion. It has also provoked requests for an investigation that must be independent and exhaustive until responsibilities are clarified. The arrest of nine Egyptian citizens who could be involved in this criminal action is good news. However, this action against mafias that traffic in human beings is not enough if the deeper causes that feed the business of illegal immigration. As the Secretary General of the United Nations has stated, Antonio Guterres, what happened is not a Greek problem. Is a European problem, which has political implications. Indeed, this drama has once again shown that the European Union has been incapable, until today, of agreeing on a common migration policy that regulates migration flows, leaves the mafias without their main livelihood and allows action in the face of dramas like this.
This is not a simple issue that can be settled by raising fences or promising open doors to anyone who wants to come to Europe. But much less denying the need for demographic replacement to arrive in a large part of other continents, for fear of reactive discourse of the extreme right. Or letting whoever regulates access to Union territory be the death trap that the Mediterranean has become.
Migration is a complex issue and, as the European Commission points out in the preamble to the Pact on Migration and Asylum that is scheduled to be approved next year, “the safety of people seeking international protection or a better life must be taken into account, as well as as the concerns of countries that fear that migratory pressures exceed their capacities. The compatibility between both concerns should be the basis of any sustainable migration policy, but it will fail if it is subordinated to the sovereignty of the states. This dichotomy between humanitarian principles assumed by the EU and security policies in the hands of some governments that have increasingly defensive and demagogic immigration policies limits the ability to rescue.
The aforementioned pact will aim to “provide security, clarity and decent conditions for women, children and men who arrive in the EU.” However, the question is how this purpose is realized while Responsibility for our borders is outsourced to countries where migrants in transit are forced to embark on a fishing boat, even if it does not present guarantees, rather than stay on it. Migration flows must be managed in a rational, efficient and humane manner, according to our needs and according to the rules of international law. And one of these rules, as far as the sea is concerned, is the obligation to assist people in danger. Not only if they ask for it – the pretext that has been used to not attend to this fishing boat – but when it is evident, as it was from the published photographs, that the drama was about to take place.