Foreign Affairs
EU Launches Coast Guard After Record 10,000 Refugees Are Rescued At Sea In 48 Hours
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The European Union has launched the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (EBCG) to monitor and protect the union’s exterior borders from streams of refugees.
It will keep 1,500 border service personnel in reserve who can be deployed with technical equipment upon government request. The force will be backed up by local authorities when battling heavy migrant flows.
“Today is a milestone in the history of European border management,” European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos said in a press release. “From now onwards, the external EU border of one Member State is the external border of all Member States – both legally and operationally.”
The launch comes during one of the busiest weeks in the Mediterranean Sea, where more than 10,000 migrants were rescued in just 48 hours. Some 1.5 million migrants have entered the EU over the past year alone.
“We are now better equipped than before,” Avramopoulos said.
EBCG is an expansion of the existing Frontex agency, which was created to combat illegal immigration. Frontex struggled to keep up with the unprecedented refugee influx that appeared last fall, which forced EU to expand it.
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