Eugenio Ambrosi, a senior migration expert of the worldwide Organization for Migration (IOM), has warned that the “transnational criminal rings of traffickers are the same as those involved in weapons and drugs”, stressing that if the EU’s efforts are focused only on the boats, “the nucleus of the criminals remains untouched”. However, the European Union is hoping to move to the third phase, where it will monitor the Libya’s territorial waters.
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Deployed forces also comprised three aircraft from France, Luxembourg, and Spain contributing in surveillance and reconnaissance operations, and as back up to naval units in boarding and sizing activities, Credentino said.
The first phase, known previously as EUNAVFOR Med, was essentially an intelligence-gathering operation created to identify and track smuggling networks, primarily along the Libya-Italy route.
Sophia is allowed to operate in worldwide waters, but will need a green light from the United Nations Security Council and Libyan authorities to venture into Libyan waters, which is by no means guaranteed.
In its second phase, the Sophia mission will now include “board, search, size and divert of vessels suspected of being used for human smuggling or trafficking”, the EU Council said at the end of September.
Operations will be under Italian command of Italian Rear Admiral Credentino until July 2016.
Migrants on a rubber dinghy wait to be rescued 20 miles (32 kilometres) off the coast of Libya, August 3.
A few experts have raised questions about the efficacy of the new “active” phase of the European Union operation.
“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”, he wrote in a briefing note last week.
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“A military operation will lead to more deaths, either directly, as collateral damage in this unwinnable “war” against smugglers, or indirectly as desperate refugees take even more risky journeys when boats are destroyed”, he said. An estimated 130,891 of them arrived in Italy after crossing the Mediterranean, while others crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey, landing in Greece. But 2,700 of those are believed to have drowned while making the unsafe journey.
