Rome 12/02/2015. 3 October 2013: 366 confirmed dead; 10 February 2015: 300 confirmed dead.
Amid other 3,363 victims – according to figures provided yesterday by the Italian Home Office with reference to the Mare Nostrum operation, replaced by Triton last January – as if to say that in front of such a humanitarian emergency no solution can be really decisive.
The National Bar Council and the legal profession express deep condolences for the victims and remind the Heads of Government meeting in Brussels [today] that Europe has chosen the face of human rights in the EU treaty by approving the European Charter of Fundamental Rights.
It is a choice that must remain the cornerstone in the declination of the decisions that the European institutions take, especially when these concern the life of those who look to Europe for salvation.
The institutional legal system, through the “Lampedusa Project” – which, from June to October last year, also held a task force in Lampedusa for technical-legal support to the coastal authorities and institutions, associations and NGOs operating in the field of migration – promoted various proposals to implement legal solutions already provided by Community legislation, including the adoption of a visa with territorial validity for humanitarian purposes (already regulated by the EU Visa Code and the Schengen Borders Code), in relation to the fact that for the most part migrants flee from countries at war or in environmental emergency.
The visa should allow safe and legal entry and, within three months maximum, access to procedures for the recognition of international protection (recognition of refugee status or subsidiary protection) or humanitarian protection.
This system could limit the carnage at sea and help combat criminal phenomena such as human trafficking.
Claudia Morelli
Communication and Media
Tel. 0039 06 97748843
Cell. 0039 340 2435953
E-mail: claudiamorelli@consiglionazionaleforense.it