The EU’s partnership approach to protecting migrants and refugees and supporting their reintegration in their countries of origin is delivering strong results. Working with the UN and African Union, more migrants stranded in Libya were supported in the first two months of 2018 than throughout 2017, while the fight against trafficking in human beings continues.

On the eve of the presentation of the Progress Report on the Implementation of the European Agenda on Migration, EU High Representative Federica Mogherini addressed the Members of the European Parliament, highlighting “a little, big European achievement of the last few months”. She said that thanks to the agreement between the European Union, the African Union, and the United Nations, “in the first two months of this year we managed to rescue and free more than 16,000 people from the camps in Libya. In two months, we managed to achieve more than in the previous year and already in 2017 the results were ten times better than the previous year.”

In the Progress Report the Commission and the High Representative take stock of the progress made since the last Report in November 2017.

The European Union and its Member States have a very clear objective when it comes to addressing migration: saving and protecting the lives of migrants and refugees. An important strand is the fight against trafficking and smuggling. The EU’s naval Operation Sophia, launched in 2015, has so far helped to apprehend more than 137 suspected smugglers and traffickers and neutralised 537 vessels used by criminals.

The EU stressed out that migration is a global challenge and no country can address it alone. Therefore cooperation among partners is crucial.

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Press Release

Delegation of the European Union to Libya