Interrogazione con richiesta di risposta scritta alla Commissione
Articolo 130 del regolamento
Dimitrios Papadimoulis, Kostas Chrysogonos, Stelios Kouloglou, Kostadinka Kuneva, Barbara Spinelli, Curzio Maltese, Elonora Forenza
Oggetto: 500 refugees missing in the Mediterranean Sea
On April 13, a delegation from the UN Refugee Agency met with survivors of an overcrowded boat that sank at an unknown location the Mediterranean Sea between Libya and Italy. According to media reports, there were 500 people in that boat. The 41 survivors (37 men, three women and a three-year-old child) were rescued by a merchant ship and taken to Kalamata on April 16.
So far, the Italian government has neither confirmed nor denied the event publicly. Should information prove right, this would be one of the biggest human tragedies, not only in European but also in global scale.
Therefore, the European Commission is asked:
- Is it informed on this case? If so, has it pressed the countries possibly involved, to move on with the necessary search and rescue operations?
- When and how the European Commission intends to secure safe and legal passage for refugees towards Europe and efficiently combat smugglers’ networks?
- How the European Commission intends to deal with the re-activation of the north-African route, which has seen an upsurge of 60% since last year according to UNHCR, after the closure of the Balkan corridor and the deal with Turkey?
