People smuggling in Libya: You can’t bomb away a problem of economics
Back in 2010, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi famously declared that if it weren’t for his rule in Libya, Europe would “turn black” with the “advance of millions of immigrants”. The wily dictator’s incendiary remarks were rightfully condemned as blackmail, but there was a genuine threat behind them.
Indeed, it wasn’t long after his fall in October 2011 that the number of people crossing the Mediterranean began to rise dramatically. In the couple of years preceding Gaddafi’s overthrow, numbers crossing from Libya and Tunisia to Italy were in the fairly low thousands, but they have since surged to 170,000, 150,000 and 180,000 in 2014, 2015 and 2016 respectively.
Having taken over the rotating presidency of the EU in January, Malta’s Prime Minister has made reaching an agreement with Libya to halt irregular migration his primary objective.
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