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INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW AND EUROPE
According to them, EU officials were fully aware that these policies would result
in death by drowning in the Mediterranean.
The communication divides the EU policy into first and second policies. The
first policy they date from 1 January 2014 until the end of July 2017. This period
covers the two incidents in one week in April 2015 when over 1,200 people died
trying to cross the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy. It follows the fall of the
Libyan leader Gaddafi in 2011 and the end of the rather murky period of bilateral
arrangements between the Italian authorities and the Gaddafi regime during which
many people were ‘pushed back’ from international waters to Libya through the
cooperation between Italy and Libyan authorities. These push-backs were found
to be contrary to the prohibition on collective expulsion’ by the European Court
of Human Rights in February 2012.” The fall of the Gaddafi regime resulted in a
prolonged period of civil war and political instability which is ongoing. The Libyan
Coast Guard which had received substantial funding and assets from the Italian
authorities before the toppling of the regime, was categorised as part of the enemy
during the NATO military action which resulted in the end of the Gaddafi regime.
As a result, many of those assets were destroyed in the bombing campaign (the
details are set out in the communication). It also post-dates the Italian search and
rescue programme, Mare Nostrum, designed to rescue those in need at sea which
ran from October 2013 to October 2014.1" The communication shows how the
refusal of EU authorities to take over the Mare Nostrum programme, replacing it
with a much more limited Frontex (the EU Border Agency) programme, Triton,
also coincided with the very high number of drownings in April 2015.
According to extensive research carried out by the Council of Europe’s
Parliamentary Assembly,” which examined in great depth a specific case where
neither the Italian authorities under their search and rescue duties in international
law, nor NATO ships in the region around Libya assisted in search and rescue. In
the specific case around which the report is structured, neither made any effort to
rescue a little boat containing 72 ‘migrants’ who were, according to the report, left
Article 4 Protocol 4 European Convention on Human Rights.
10 Hirsi Jamaa App No 27765/09 — HEJUD, [2012] ECHR 1845.
1 Martina Tazzioli, Border displacements. Challenging the politics of rescue between Mare
Nostrum and Triton, Migration Studies 4 (2016), 1-19; Glenda Garelli — Martina Tazzioli,
The biopolitical warfare on migrants: EU Naval Force and NATO operations of migration
government in the Mediterranean, Critical Military Studies 4 (2018), 181-200.
Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly debate on 24 June 2014 (21st Sitting) (see Doc.
13532, report of the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons, rapporteur:
Ms Tineke Strik). Text adopted by the Assembly on 24 June 2014 (21st Sitting); Jack Shenker,
Migrants left to die after catalogue of failures, says report into boat tragedy, The Guardian
(28 March 2012), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/28/left-to-die-migrants¬
boat-inquiry.
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