European Operation Against Immigrant Trafficking

The flow of immigrants from North Africa prompts the European Union to take action.

Roxana Vasile, 19.05.2015, 14:07

This
is a tragedy, people are losing their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean.
It’s important for the European Union to take action! said NATO Secretary
General, Jens Stoltenberg, who hailed the decision made in Brussels on Monday
to launch an unprecedented European naval operation to check the activity of
people smugglers.
Against the backdrop of the insecure climate and political
turmoil in North Africa, particularly in Libya, smugglers who want to make easy
money take advantage of people in misery and develop a new type of business, by
carrying thousands of people in illegal improvised boats. Overloaded and
unsafe, many of them sink, claiming thousands of lives.
Many Jihad fighters can hide among the immigrants. According to the mass media in
Italy, the country which is most affected by the flow of migrants, those
fighters try to reach Europe, to perpetrate attacks. Therefore, they conceal
their identity, shaving their beards and hiding among the migrants in order not
to be recognised.
Furthermore, they say the Islamic State terrorist group would
allegedly be involved in the issue, as it is the actual beneficiary of human
trafficking on the Mediterranean, collecting a sort of tax or fee from the
smugglers who organise the illegal boat travels.
Terrorists are also coercing
some immigrants to join their group, training them before leaving for Europe.
That is why the European naval operation, EUNAVFOR Med, is designed to spot the
ships used by armed guides to drag smaller, improvised boats packed with
hundreds of immigrants, which they let to sail adrift at high sea. The mission
based in Rome and led by Italian admiral Enrico Credendino is to be launched in
June. It will mainly consist in deploying war ships and surveillance military
aircraft belonging to the European national armed forces, off the Libyan coast.
That will be a naval and not a military operation, aimed at rescuing lives at
sea, Brussels sources say. France, Great
Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain have already pledged to contribute ships to
the operation. Poland and Slovenia are expected to make available surveillance
aircraft and helicopters. However, the European Union can’t receive and provide
shelter to all immigrants who flee their countries.
Those who say the doors
should be left wide open are only cynical, because they are well aware of the
fact that this is an impossible scenario. According to the President of the
European Council, Donald Tusk, by the end of the year, the European Commission
intends to put in place a permanent mechanism meant to redirect migrants
towards the EU member states, based on mandatory quotas, in accordance with the
respective European state’s economic development and number of
inhabitants.
Romania does not seem to
be affected, at least for now, by the flow of North African immigrants, but
president Klaus Iohannis has pledged that his country will be solidary with the
other European states in the effort to take over and shelter the
immigrants.