The European Union launched the first phase of the operation in June, which involves naval surveillance and monitoring trafficking patterns. The operation, named Sophia after a baby born a migrant ship before being rescued, requires European ships to stay in global waters, but officials hope that they eventually will receive permissions to enter a few foreign waters to intercept ships closer to shore. Besides the ships, an Italian aircraft carrier will participate in the operation and another four aircrafts are expected to join later and complete the force.
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Migrants on a rubber dinghy wait to be rescued 20 miles (32 kilometres) off the coast of Libya, August 3.
The operation will move from its intelligence-gathering phase to its operational and active phase against human smugglers.
In a briefing note written last week cited by CNN, Thierry Tardy, senior analyst at the EU Institute for Security Studies said: “There is real uncertainty on whether the operation will ever be able – for either legal or political reasons – to get to the core of its mandate”.
In order to accomplish this highly operative part of the mission, member states have agreed to enhance the Force by deploying more assets at sea.
Even if it does succeed in disrupting the smugglers’ networks, he wrote, there’s a strong chance it will only push migrants to try different routes, such as the one via Turkey and Greece that already appears to have dwarfed the Libya-Italy voyage in popularity over the course of this year.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday Europe needs to rewrite its “obsolete” asylum rules to tackle the migrant crisis as European warships went into action against people smugglers in the Mediterranean.
This year, more than half a million refugees have arrived over sea originating mainly from war-torn Syria, the greatest instance of mass-migration since World War II.
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In Tajoura, Libya, Red Crescent teams on Monday recovered more than 70 bodies of people who had drowned during their attempt to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe; majority had nothing to identify them.
