Joint mission to Sicily of the Committee on Budgets and the Committee Civil Liberties, Justice and Homes Affairs to examine how resources from the EU budget are spent to manage migration and refugee flows, as well as the system for reception, identification and retention of migrants.

visit

Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs

migration and refugees in Europe (T)

EP delegation

Committee on Budgets

Frontex

surveillance of the external borders of the EU (T)

Sicily

Joint BUDG - LIBE mission to Sicily: meetings with staff in charge of Frontex, joint operation Triton and EASO

Exterior view of the city of Catania, Sicily, Italy. (2 shots)

Interior, Staff in charge of Frontex and joint operation Triton, exchange of views, ( shots)

SOUNDBITE (English), Jean-Pierre SCHEMBRI, EASO, "We've started our operations obviously on a limited number of items, including training, data collection, statistics..., we have an early warning and preparedness system for all member states, where we provide early warning on asylum flows and trends analyses. We started this sort of operations and also operations on the ground and now we are expanding to other areas such as joint processing, such as fighting smuggling networks of immigrants, so I think we are growing and we are growing fast and we are making an added value, and this is the most important thing, we provide added value."  

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippo CIARAMELLETTI, Captain of the Italian Navy, "Triton operation is a law enforcement operation and the first aim is obviously border control; but saving lives is a priority for us and for all the assets involved in Triton and in other operations in the Mediterranean Sea. That's why on board of the assets there are doctors in order to give first assistence to the migrants and all the operations provided by Europe and by the Frontex agency are respecting the international conventions so it's very important to respect Human Rights and also we are also very afraid of this problem and we have doctors, psychologists at the hot spot can help us also to solve the problems and the issues."

SOUNDBITE (English), Philippo CIARAMELLETTI, Captain of the Italian Navy, "Everything is improving right now because of the numbers are growing up. And they are improving the best way, the hot spots are very useful to collect information for the migrants".