Europe's Boat People: Maritime Cooperation in the Mediterranean. EU-ISS Chaillot Paper 41, July 2000

Pugh, Michael (2000) Europe's Boat People: Maritime Cooperation in the Mediterranean. EU-ISS Chaillot Paper 41, July 2000.

Abstract

[From the Preface]. This Chaillot Paper looks at the question of ‘boat people’ in Europe, a recurring phenomenon in Europe for the last few years in the Mediterranean in particular, off the coasts of France, Italy and Spain. In addition to a lack of legal and political rulings on the status of these clandestine seafarers, there are often human tragedies that the European democracies are powerless to prevent.... However, the rise in the number of refugees at sea that can be expected, in the context of the development of the European Union’s common security policy, calls for a strengthening of cooperation among European navies on the one hand and with those of countries to the south of the Mediterranean on the other. That is the central argument of this Chaillot Paper, in which Michael Pugh also aptly demonstrates that the boat people issue is essentially one of humanitarian crisis management, and is not a question of a direct military threat to the security of European countries. [From the Introduction]. The aim of this study is to offer a new perspective on the potential for maritime cooperation in the Mediterranean, thereby adding to our conceptualisation of security and perhaps contributing to policy development. This study focuses on maritime cooperation in coping with ‘boat people’ as an aspect of the new European security agenda. It concerns the burgeoning issue of seaborne migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean. Particular attention is paid to potential cooperation in the western Mediterranean (from approximately westwards of a line drawn from the south of the Adriatic Sea to the Gulf of Gabès). This is not to deny the importance of the eastern Mediterranean, but here there are complicating factors, such as Greco-Turkish relations and the Middle East peace process, that cloud the prospects for maritime cooperation. There are perhaps stronger foundations for maritime cooperation between France, Italy and Spain (participants in the European Maritime Force, EUROMARFOR, along with Portugal) on the one hand, and southern Mediterranean states on the other.