Mounir Satouri is a Member of the European Parliament and the Green chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights.
It is now over a month since the EU-backed Libyan Coast Guard (LCG) opened fire without warning on the rescue ship Ocean Viking in international waters, risking the lives of 34 humanitarian workers and 87 shipwreck survivors.
This attack was conducted from a boat transferred to the LCG from Italy under an EU-funded program. But the bloc’s regulations are clear: The European Commission cannot fund parties involved in human rights abuses. And the European Ombudsman has already accused the Commission of maladministration over its refusal to release the impact assessments of its Libya program.
Yet, despite all this — and an attempted homicide complaint lodged in the Italian courts — EU cooperation with and funding for the LCG continues unabated.
The level of malpractice is going unnoticed because these events are solely being viewed through the lens of Europe’s ongoing migration crisis. Indeed, it is a moral stain on Europe that its border control strategy involves funding militias that kidnap people on the high seas and return them to places where, according to bodies like the U.N., they are tortured, raped, enslaved and sometimes killed.
But it would be a mistake to view this solely as a migration issue. The central Mediterranean is among the busiest shipping lanes and is crucial to the world’s economies. And Europe cannot be taken seriously as a legitimate security actor while it funds anarchic militias operating in destructive ways close to its shores.
It’s not just refugees and NGOs, Italian fishing boats have been attacked by LCG crews too. The contagion of impunity in the Mediterranean was also visible in the repeated drone attacks on flotilla vessels in international waters that were bound for Gaza. Mercifully, Spanish and Italian naval intervention provided some disincentive for such attacks. But it should never have been allowed to reach that point.
Of course, Italy’s shift in posture was too late for the Ocean Viking crew, who requested NATO assistance after the shooting but received no support. But in the future, could European countries find themselves in the absurd position of providing military escorts or medical evacuations for their citizens under attack from forces that were funded by their own taxes?
Faced with a civil society backlash from 42 humanitarian and legal organizations after the Ocean Viking attack, the Commission defended its continued funding of the LCG, saying it needed to “remain engaged to improve things” — an argument that would have held more water were it not for 10 years of unchanged behavior by the LCG and extensively documented violence. In a grim irony, another Italy-provided LCG boat shot at another rescue ship just two days after the Commission’s statement.
The way to constrain an out-of-control actor isn’t to reward and enable their behavior. And from a policy standpoint, Europe’s approach is incoherent on several levels: It’s been widely documented (including as recently as last month) that Libyan government-associated militias play a double-game to profit off the crisis in the Mediterranean, and are involved in both border enforcement as well as smuggling and trafficking.
In the context of states cutting development aid, what remains must be spent wisely, helping deliver stability — not the opposite. And yet, Europe-backed militias have used their maritime assets in internal Libyan conflicts, and experts now fear that EU support has enabled conflicting parties to disregard the peace process and strengthen militia control over Libyan public institutions.
Such cynical foreign policy sparks backlash. The region is watching the EU’s transactional approach in Libya and beyond, with the head of Libya’s Presidential Council implicitly criticizing the bloc’s approach at the U.N. this month. Plus, after two years of inaction and incoherence on what a U.N. commission has now termed a genocide in Gaza, European diplomacy can ill-afford further accusations of hypocrisy and neocolonialism from the global south.
Policy shaped by short-term migration headlines ultimately risks handing influence and power to Europe’s geopolitical rivals.
Moreover, the Commission’s attempt to appease Europe’s right over migration hasn’t worked — instead, it has sacrificed rules, transparency, morality and security. And perforated by bullet holes, the floating crime scene of the Ocean Viking now sits in an Italian harbor, signaling the further breakdown of rule of law in the Mediterranean.
However, this could also be the cold water shock the Commission needs to abandon a decade of failed strategy.
As it draws up a new Pact for the Mediterranean, the Commission could make sure to include a commitment to stop financing Libyan security forces, and urge Italy and others to do the same. It could also include commitments to humanitarian action, to help EU member countries coordinate competent search and rescue operations, to open routes for people fleeing Libya to seek safety and justice, and to ensure European financing supports rather than endangers — whether at home, in Libya or at sea.
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