Worst migrant death toll in the Mediterranean since 2017, UN agency reports

by Benjamin Fox

The first three months of 2023 were the deadliest since 2017 for migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean, according to data published on Wednesday (12 March) by the International Organisation for Migration.

The UN migration agency’s Missing Migrants Project documented 441 migrant deaths in the Central Mediterranean between January and March.

Meanwhile, the EU border agency, Frontex, reported 54,000 irregular crossings into the bloc in the first quarter, up a fifth from 2022. Twenty-eight thousand people arrived in the EU from the Central Mediterranean, a threefold increase from last year.

“The central Mediterranean route accounts for more than half of all irregular border crossings into the EU,” Frontex added.

Earlier this week, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government announced a state of emergency on immigration after a sharp rise in arrivals across the Mediterranean. The move will allow Italy to return migrants more quickly, a step which has been encouraged by the European Commission in recent weeks.

Last month, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson urged countries across the EU to increase the deportation of failed asylum seekers and mutually recognise migrant returns agreements in its latest step to improve control of the EU’s borders.

Mutual recognition of returns agreements across the bloc would make it “much easier to streamline returns,” said the EU’s home affairs chief. However, few member states use mutual recognition though the bloc’s existing rules allow it.

“The persisting humanitarian crisis in the central Mediterranean is intolerable,” said IOM Director General Antonio Vitorino. “With more than 20,000 deaths recorded on this route since 2014, I fear that these deaths have been normalised. States must respond. Delays and gaps in State-led SAR are costing human lives,” he added.

However, there have been a series of recent reports of delays in government-led rescue responses and hindrances to the operations of NGO search and rescue (SaR) vessels in the central Mediterranean, resulting in the sinking of several boats bearing dozens of migrants.

EU lawmakers are expected in the coming weeks to open interinstitutional negotiations on the first legislative files in the proposed Pact of Migration and Asylum. Leaders have set themselves a target for next year’s European elections to finalise the  of the bloc’s legal regime on immigration and asylum.

EU home affairs ministers agreed to finalise their own negotiating mandate on most of the files at their next meeting, while the European Parliament is also expected to agree on its stance on most of the files in the coming weeks, paving the way for trilogue negotiations between the EU institutions before summer.

*first publihsed in: Euractiv.com