AS (2012) CR 12
Addendum 1

2012 ORDINARY SESSION

________________________

(Second part)

REPORT

Twelfth Sitting

Tuesday 24 April 2012 at 10 a.m.

ADDENDUM 1

Lives lost in the Mediterranean Sea: Who is responsible?

The following text was submitted for inclusion in the official report by a member who was present in the Chamber but was prevented by lack of time from delivering it.

Ms KYRIAKIDOU (Cyprus) — I congratulate my Dutch colleague, Ms Strik, on her admirable effort to dig at the core of this matter and unravel this tragedy, which should and could have been avoided.

Systemic failure, or a vacuum of responsibility as some prefer to call it, lies at the heart of this debate, and it is pertinent to ask whether things might have been different if it were other nationals aboard this little boat and not some desperate Africans trying to flee their fate from the chaos in Libya last year. We should also try to focus on ways of avoiding such disastrous and tragic incidents in the future.

It is a fact that some member States of the Council of Europe, due to their geographical position, scale or lack of resources - also in terms of search and rescue facilities - are thus more exposed than others when faced with an emergency situation, such as the one we are discussing here today. As the report rightly points out, such incidents are very frequent occurrences in the Mediterranean Sea, and apparently 2011 has been the deadliest year in decades. This, coupled with the fact that the whole Middle Eastern and north African regions have been in turmoil has increased migratory flows towards western Europe. Thus, we need to install, in this region at least, more flexible and better-tuned emergency response mechanisms, in order to react efficiently and hastily to such incidents, taking into account the availability and resources of each implicated partner. Better co-ordination and an early warning system, involving all operators, should also be envisaged. Also, it is of the utmost importance for an equitable burden-sharing responsibility to be applied among those countries managing the external borders of the European Union. We should admit that there is a collective failure and avoid pointing the finger at any specific country.

Additionally, we need to make sure that migrants and asylum seekers disembarking on Europe’s shores and holding centres are given the right to benefit from the full range of assistance measures and human rights, as enshrined in the different international and European legal instruments. For not only did the nine survivors of this tragedy escape drowning by near miracle, most have still, to this date, to be regularised and granted asylum, with their precarious situations pending before different administrative procedures.

Let us take this opportunity to make sure that we shall, in the future, do our utmost as parliamentarians and exert pressure whenever and wherever possible, in order to prevent such tragic events.