ACT Alliance and ACT Alliance EU have joined over 70 organisations in expressing their grave concerns about proposed EU cooperation with Libya in an open letter to EU heads of state and EU policymakers. This concern was triggered by the declaration following the recent European Council meeting on Malta on 3 February, announcing plans to seek closer cooperation with Libya “to ensure effective control of our external border and stem illegal flows into the EU”, and ahead of the upcoming European Council meeting on 9-10 March, which is expected to discuss these plans in more detail.
“The decision to transfer the responsibility for managing migratory movements along the central Mediterranean route to Libya will neither reduce human rights abuses, nor end smuggling. Instead, it will significantly increase harm and suffering,” the letter reads.
It calls upon the EU to ”[f]acilitate safe mobility by opening and strengthening safe and regular channels to Europe for refugees and migrants including through resettlement, humanitarian admission and humanitarian visas, family reunification, worker mobility across skill levels and student visas,” as well as to review the human rights situation in Libya, and to put in place specific measures to protect vulnerable groups in all its approaches to migration management.
