A new EU migrant rescue mission will eventually replace the Italian Mare Nostrum programme, according to Italian Home Affairs Minister Angelino Alfano.
Speaking during a meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers, Mr Alfano yesterday said the Italian rescue operation was always meant to be replaced once the EU stepped up its involvement.
“This new EU mission will replace Mare Nostrum. We will not be having two lines of defence for our maritime borders, we will have only one.
“We have always said that this would be the case,” he said.
We will not be having two lines of defence
Maltese officers are currently in Rome discussing the possibility of Malta’s participation in the EU’s mission, dubbed Triton, being hosted by Italy.
Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia told the Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting in Luxembourg today that the EU’s border agency Frontex had to be given the financial resources that would allow it to perform the tasks entrusted to it. He thanked Italy for the work carried out by Mare Nostrum and noted that the AFM daily assisted in these operations.
The Mare Nostrum programme was launched in the wake of the Lampedusa disasters, in which more than 700 people died last October.
It is believed to be costing the Italian coffers some €9 million a month, and has saved around 100,000 migrants who crossed the Mediterranean on rogue boats from North Africa over the past 12 months.
Triton is expected to cost significantly less than the Italian operation and will be much smaller in scale. Initial indications show it will cost around €3 million a month and will include fewer vessels than those currently being used by the Italian government.
Media reports as to whether the two programmes would coexist have conflicted in recent weeks, however Mr Alfano yesterday laid the issue to rest, saying a final document had already been approved by the Italian government on the matter.
Security analysts last month said stopping the Mare Nostrum mission would likely lead to the deaths of hundreds of migrants.
Smugglers were sending migrants out on boats which were more precarious than ever before because they were relying on the Italian government to pick them up practically outside Libyan waters.
“Our intelligence suggests that smugglers will maintain their practice, at least for the first few weeks, to test the waters. They will literally send migrants to their deaths, knowing their boats will sink long before they reach Europe’s coastguard mission,” the sources had said.
Some 500 traffickers have been arrested as a result of the Mare Nostrum operations.