STRASBOURG, France
European Parliament has adopted a resolution to increase the EU budget for fighting illegal immigration networks in the Mediterranean in a bid to stop migrant deaths at sea.
The resolution, which was approved by 449 votes to 130, with 93 abstentions Wednesday, said that the budget would be tripled, increasing from the current €3 million to €9 million.
The resolution also urged EU and its member states to ensure that search-and-rescue obligations were “effectively fulfilled."
"The EU should do everything possible to prevent further loss of life at sea by expanding the mandate of Triton operation in the Mediterranean to include search-and-rescue operations at EU level," it said.
Operation Triton is coordinated by the EU border agency Frontex after Italy's Mare Nostrum mission stood down. It has been widely criticized for failing to save refugee lives and for having a budget about a third the size of its predecessor.
"Parliament calls for a robust and permanent humanitarian European rescue operation, which, like Mare Nostrum, would operate on the high seas and to which all member states would contribute financially and with equipment and assets," the resolution added.
Last week on Thursday, EU’s 28 leaders agreed to boost funding for operations in the Mediterranean to €120 million ($130 million) at an emergency meeting following the reported deaths of more than 800 people at sea between April 18 and 19.
Members of European Parliament called for establishing a "binding quota for distributing asylum seekers among all EU countries, bigger contributions to resettlement programs, better cooperation with third countries and tougher measures against people smugglers."
Speaking in front of the lawmakers, European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker both emphasized on the need to further strengthen the fight against human trafficking “to prevent further humanitarian tragedies in the Mediterranean.”
“The best way to protect migrants is to prevent them from boarding boats,” Tusk said.
“It requires more cooperation with neighboring countries of Libya, including Egypt and Sudan to prevent migrants from reaching this country ravaged by civil war,” he added.
Tusk also called for the development of “a common asylum policy across Europe and development of similar standards for the reception and integration of refugees in member countries of the EU.”
Juncker, for his part, said the EU's response to the latest humanitarian tragedy in the Mediterranean was "insufficient," describing abandoning Italy's Mare Nostrum mission and replacing it by the Triton operation as a "serious error."
