Italy and Malta’s prime ministers emerged hawkish from an emergency conference call with their UK counterpart yesterday demanding Europe went after smugglers responsible for the exodus of migrants from Libya.

“What we have before us are smuggler slave traders of the 21st century. We are going back in time to when people made money from human life. That is what is happening now in North Africa,” Matteo Renzi told a press conference he gave jointly with Joseph Muscat.

Earlier, Mr Renzi gave the Maltese delegation, which included Deputy Prime Minister Louis Grech, an outline of what Italy had in mind.

Not much detail emerged during the press conference, even though both prime ministers were specifically asked about it.

However, both excluded a boots-on-the-ground scenario where a European peacekeeping operation would also take care of clamping down on smugglers.

“We are not in a position where we can force the two sides to make peace. We’re talking about targeted intervention to deal with the smugglers,” Mr Renzi said.

The meeting was prompted by Saturday’s tragedy at sea, the dead­liest accident at sea in peacetime, in which more than 900 people are believed to have drowned about 130 miles south of Lampedusa in a single shipwreck.

The only 24 bodies recovered were brought to Malta for burial yesterday on board the same vessel carrying 27 survivors, who proceeded to Sicily to be interviewed by magistrates investigating the disaster.

The human drama continued to unfold on the high seas even as yesterday’s meeting was in progress. The prime ministers were briefed about three rescue operations in the Mediterranean, one of them involving a group of 300 migrants who had 20 dead aboard with them.

And the crisis also intensified on the east when a wooden boat ran aground in Rhodes, off the Greek coast, in an incident that cost the lives of three migrants and saw 30 hospitalised.

Tragedy map: Matteo Renzi said it seemed more ‘death boats’ were being sent to sea. Graphic: Design Studio

Mr Renzi said that, even after the weekend’s tragedy, there seemed to be an escalation of ‘death boats’ being sent out to sea.

If we care about human dignity, we cannot allow this to go on

“This shows that a criminal organisation is behind all this. We cannot allow trade in human life,” he said.

Dr Muscat picked up the point, saying the smugglers could not be allowed to get away with what they were doing thinking that Europe does not have “the attributes” to deal with this crisis. “Europe needs to team up to deal with this crisis... If it doesn’t it will be judged very badly, as happened when it turned a blind eye to genocide,” he said.

“These criminal gangs are not playing around; if it’s true that there were 950 immigrants on board the boat that sank on Saturday, the smugglers would have made between €1 million and €5 million at the going rate,” he said.

The press conference, covered by a packed room of journalists from Italy and around the world, was peppered with well crafted sound bites, delivered by two prime ministers, who are reputed for their skill in marketing themselves. However, many journalists were left asking for the beef.

More details on what shape this “targeted action” might take may emerge from Thursday’s emergency meeting of EU leaders.

Mr Renzi is clearly putting a lot of weight on this meeting. In the coming hours, he said, the European Council could show that this was not just a problem for Italy and Malta.

“If we care about human dignity, we cannot allow this to go on.”

Dr Muscat said there were precedents for EU action, citing as an example the anti-piracy operation being carried off Somalia in a coordinated European effort.

However, that operation is offshore and there has been repeated talk by the Italian side to do something “at the root of the problem”.

Moreover, in a comment addressed mostly at his Italian audience, where politicians from across the political spectrum have been calling for a naval blockade of Libya, Mr Renzi all but excluded a military operation at sea. A blockade, he said would do smugglers a favour because the European vessels would basically be picking up migrants just outside Libyan waters.

In any case, Thursday should bring more answers and establish whether this latest tragedy – the deadliest incident since World War II – will be a “game changer” as Dr Muscat put it yesterday, or simply a repeat of the undelivered promises made when 600 people died in Lampedusa in October 2013.

mark.micallef@timesofmalta.com