An EU version of Italy’s sea rescue mission for migrants is to be launched next month, in response to repeated calls from Rome for help in dealing with the human tide from Africa and the Middle East.
In Brussels the EU said its Frontex border agency would complement and eventually replace Italy’s “Mare Nostrum” operation, which Rome says costs 9.5 million euros a month even though the level of funding for the new European mission remains uncertain.
“The ‘Frontex Plus’ operation will substitute, take over Mare Nostrum, even if it will not be to the same extent. ‘Mare Nostrum’ has been very ambitious and we don’t know if we can find the means to do exactly what Italy has done,” said Cecilia Malmström, EU commissioner for Home Affairs.
Members of other states will be asked to contribute. The more they do so in terms of ships and helicopters, the larger the extension of the Frontex Plus operation will be,”
Italy has long argued that it cannot continue to take in desperate people often heading for other parts of Europe.
Whether governments will agree to contribute more is open to question, given the strength of anti-immigrant feeling in some EU countries.
Last weekend saw a familiar tale of death at sea as a migrant boat overturned. An Italian navy patrol boat found 73 migrants on board a rubber dinghy, along with 18 dead bodies.
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