EU backs migrant crisis naval force

EU ministers have approved plans to establish a naval force to combat people-smugglers operating from Libya.The aim is to launch the operation next month, with a headquarters in Rome under an Italian admiral, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said.

The EU is struggling to cope with a surge in illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe.

Mogherini was speaking after talks with EU foreign and defence ministers.

The UK is playing the lead role at the UN Security Council in drafting a resolution that would give the EU a legal basis for using military force against people traffickers.

There would be three phases in the naval operation, the EU foreign policy chief explained:

• Intelligence gathering on smugglers;
• inspection and detection of smugglers' boats, and;
• destruction of those boats.

"It is not so much the destruction of the boats but the destruction of the business models of the (smugglers') networks themselves," she explained.

Libyan role

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Britain's Defence Secretary Michael Fallon said the plan was in the early stages, but the UK would help to develop it further.

"We are seconding some planning staff to think through the details of how it will work," he added.

"Any destruction of boats will require some legal authority and that has to come from the United Nations but we are not at that stage yet."

Mogherini stressed that co-operation with officials in Libya, a country torn apart by feuding militias, would be vital to make the operation succeed.

"We are looking for a partnership - there is a responsibility the Libyans themselves have to take on their territory, for the land and sea borders."

The EU would have to work closely not only with the recognised government in Tobruk - represented at the UN - but also with rival officials in Tripoli and Misrata, to dismantle the smuggling networks, she told a news conference in Brussels. "The [Libyan] municipalities might have an important role to play," she said.

The Mediterranean mission will be led by Adm Enrico Credendino, an Italian commander who ran the EU's anti-piracy mission off Somalia, Operation Atalanta.

More than 1,800 migrants have died in the Mediterranean in 2015. That is a 20-fold increase on the same period in 2014.

Disrupting the people-smuggling networks is part of a wider EU plan for tackling the migration crisis. The European Commission has urged EU states to adopt national quotas for housing migrants, to ease the pressure on Italy, Greece and Malta.

The EU also aims to tighten co-operation with migrant transit countries in Africa, to make it easier to send economic migrants home. Too many irregular migrants with no right to asylum manage to stay in Europe, the Commission says.

Neither of Libya's rival governments, recognised or not, have yet shown any desire to co-operate with this plan. Both have so far criticised it. Some Libyans have been incensed by the proposal and see it as a pretext for "boots on the ground".

For nearly a decade Libya's smuggling networks included not only professional gangs but also some local communities - and even the parts of Libya's coastguard looking to make extra cash. Add the hundreds of militias that have ruled Libya since 2011 to that mix and the challenge grows exponentially.

It is not clear how destroying boats at sea would stem the flow of migrants. If there are plans to destroy boats on standby before they leave Libyan shores then that would require a significant amount of intelligence on the ground. EU member states have no official presence in Libya.

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