EU border mission 'overwhelmed' with equipment offers

BRUSSELS - The EU’s border agency has received more offers of equipment than its needs as it approaches the end-of-week start date for its migrant surveillance operation in the Mediterranean.

“We launched a call for participation, we received an overwhelming response, far more equipment than we could use,” said Frontex spokesperson Izabella Cooper.

Triton, as the operation is called, now has two open sea patrol vessels, which can remain out at sea for days. It also has two coastal patrol vessels, two coastal patrol boats, two aircraft, one helicopter as well as five debriefing teams.

It will operate within Italian territorial waters and partly in Italian and Maltese search and rescue operation zones.

However the UK refused to contribute to the mission, which will be on the watch for the thousands of migrants that cross the sea looking for a better life in the EU.

“We do not support the planned search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean," said Baroness Joyce Anelay, a Foreign Office minister.

"We believe that they create an unintended ‘pull factor’… thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths."

She said that the UK would instead focus on tackling smugglers instead.

Meanwhile Italy’s own search and rescue operation, despite some contradicting signals, is set to continue in parallel.

“At the moment, no one has told us to stop the mission,” squadron admiral Filippo Maria Foffi told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday (28 October).

“I am not sure when and if we will stop,” he added.

The Italian admiral is urging member states to consider conducting joint-operations further out in international waters where most rescues take place and where criminals are more active.

He also dismisses the idea that Mare Nostrum has created a pull factor.

“If someone is talking about pull factors, he simply doesn’t know what he is speaking about,” he said, noting that many people are forced to get onto unsafe boats.

Last month, some 450 people perished off the coast of Malta when smugglers deliberately rammed their boat after the migrants refused to board a smaller vessel.

Under Foffi’s command, the Italian navy along with the assistance of one Slovenian naval vessel, have in the past 12 months rescued some 153,000 people in their attempts to cross the Mediterranean from the North African coast. A large percentage is Syrian and Eritrean nationals.

Launched one year ago, Mare Nostrum’s operational life span was only supposed to be a few weeks but kept getting extended. Around 700 smugglers have been apprehended.

The solution to the migratory misery is two-fold, according to the admiral - members states should take in more refugees as well as do more to help the war-torn or poverty-stricken countries they are coming from.

“I have all my sympathy for them [migrants seeking to cross]," he said.