16/04/2025 Migration, International Protection and Economic Co-operation
At its meeting in Strasbourg on 9 April, the Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons called on member states to fully comply with the instruments of international humanitarian law, maritime law and those relating to the protection of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Recalling the obligation to protect the right to life – as set out in the European Convention on Human Rights – the committee emphasised member states’ responsibility to prevent migrants from perishing at sea, asking them to share responsibility for search and rescue operations in European waters and to assist coastal member states in such operations.
To this end, it called on member states to further strengthen the financial and material capacities of the coast guard authorities, particularly in the regions covering Greece’s Aegean, Spain’s Canary and Italy’s Sicily islands. Furthermore, it recommended re-evaluating their co-operation with Libyan and Tunisian coast guard authorities, in the light of their non-compliance with human rights standards.
The draft resolution, based on the report by Paulo Pisco (Portugal, SOC) and adopted unanimously by the committee, recommends “re-establishing large-scale European search and rescue operations” and “recognising Europe’s oceans and seas as maritime humanitarian spaces”.
The committee also called on member states to take measures to prohibit pushbacks, collective expulsions, and to monitor swiftly and independently all cases of human rights violations at sea and violations of the international maritime law, including allegations of pushbacks. Member states should also allow humanitarian civil society organisations to operate complementarily to public actors without introducing legal and administrative obstacles, according to the parliamentarians.
Finally, the adopted text underlines the need to “establish safe legal pathways for migrants in need of international protection”.