While SOS Méditerranée calls on European countries to urgently create a “Rescue Task Force” after the death of at least 79 migrants in the sinking of a boat off Greece on Wednesday, the director of the French Office for immigration and integration supports on franceinfo Thursday that there are already “rescue forces”.
“We must help people when they are at sea and in distress”launches Thursday June 15 on franceinfo Didier Leschi, director of the French Office for Immigration and Integration, after the death of at least 79 people in the sinking of a migrant boat off Greece on Wednesday .
Didier Leschi believes that “this is what is done for the most part, and that is why in a way the arrival flows have increased considerably” in the Mediterranean Sea. The boss of Ofii evokes a “terrible drama”as the search for possible survivors continues off the Peloponnese peninsula.
Asylum applications should be processed “at the borders of Europe”
According to the Greek port authorities, this boat had been spotted on Tuesday afternoon by a surveillance plane from the European agency Frontex. Didier Leschi specifies the missions of this European Border and Coast Guard Agency: “It’s an agency with about 10,000 people responsible for watching what the movements are at the border and ensuring that people can be rescued when necessary, or have access to their right”, he explains. “And at the same time, he continues, the idea of European countries, within the framework of the compromise which has just been reached between the various European interior ministers, is to succeed in ensuring that asylum applications are processed at the borders of the ‘Europe and there again, this is work that Frontex will no doubt have to do.
While SOS Méditerranée calls on European countries to urgently create a “Rescue Task Force”, Didier Leschi maintains that it already exists “rescue forces“. He believes that the question which arises rather is “to see how the countries of the European Union agree on these devices”knowing that each country has a different appreciation of the subject.
The procedures for discussions within the EU are long
“Eastern countries have a completely different history than Western countries when it comes to immigration, especially immigration from countries in the South”, says the director of Ofii. If he recognizes that one of the “peculiarities of the European Union, it is the very long discussion procedures”Didier Leschi maintains that he “we have to manage to convince each other”. “It takes time, and in the meantime, we can have dramas”he adds.
Didier Leschi recalls that “sailings to Italy have increased significantly year on year”as “departures from Libya”. “More than 50,000 people have already landed in Italy since last year”, according to the director of the French Office for Immigration and Integration. These are mainly migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, Egypt or Pakistan, while departures from Libya are mainly made by people from Egypt, Bangladesh or Pakistan.
“It is not directly nationalities that are caught up in conflicts, but rather trying to escape an economic situation”, notes the director of the Ofii. He therefore considers that “the major problem [qui se pose aujourd’hui]it is the right to stay in one’s country”. It is therefore necessary to wonder for him on the way of “to ensure that the development of the countries of the South is sufficiently harmonious in relation to all the populations so that we do not have a desperate flight towards Europe, one of the envied continents at the moment”.