ROME — The detention of a German rescue ship in Italy has reignited a long-running dispute over the role of private vessels rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean. Italian authorities detained the Sea-Watch 5 for 45 days last weekend and fined the German organization operating it €7,500.On 13 August, the vessel rescued six people in the Mediterranean and, according to Sea-Watch, encountered an unidentified armed boat and documented the deaths of eight people.The Italian Interior Ministry said the vessel was detained for failing to inform the Libyan coastguard about the rescue operation.Sea-Watch said it planned to appeal against the detention, probably in the coming week.”The detention of Sea-Watch 5 is based on the claim that the ship’s crew failed to inform Libyan actors about the rescue in international waters. Yet the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre never instructed us to do so,” Sea-Watch spokesperson Giulia Messmer said.Messmer added that the Libyan coastguard was present at the scene following the rescue and had communicated with the Sea-Watch crew by radio.The case is the latest in a long-running dispute between Italy and German sea rescue organisations operating in the Mediterranean.Critics of the NGOs, including politicians from Germany’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), have accused rescue organizations of encouraging dangerous Mediterranean crossings and indirectly assisting people-smuggling networks.The organizations reject such accusations and argue that their operations save lives on one of the world’s deadliest migration routes.A central point of contention is where people rescued at sea should be taken. NGO vessels generally bring those they rescue to European ports rather than returning them to Libya, which the United Nations does not consider a safe place for migrants to be returned to.Since Giorgia Meloni became prime minister in October 2022, Italy has tightened the rules governing private rescue vessels.Under legislation introduced in 2023, commonly known as the Piantedosi decree, rescue vessels are required to head to an assigned port without delay after carrying out a rescue. NGOs have criticised the policy because the ports assigned by Italian authorities can be hundreds of kilometres from the rescue area, preventing ships from remaining at sea to respond to further emergencies.Italy tightened the rules again in December 2024, extending potential liability beyond the captain to shipowners and operators in cases of repeated violations involving the same vessel within five years.According to Sea-Watch, Italian authorities have detained civilian rescue ships 44 times since 2023, keeping them out of operation for a combined total of more than 960 days.Alongside Sea-Watch, Sea-Eye, SOS Humanity and the smaller RESQSHIP operate their own vessels in the central Mediterranean. Several ships, including Sea-Watch 5 and Humanity 1, also serve as alliance ships for United4Rescue, a charity founded in 2019 that raises and distributes donations.According to the Italian Interior Ministry, more than half of all migrants brought to Italy on private ships since October 2022 have been rescued by German organisations.German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has argued that sea rescue should be the responsibility of the state rather than private organizations.Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul has previously gone further. In 2023, when he was the CDU/CSU’s foreign policy spokesman, he argued that rescue organizations were unintentionally helping people-smuggling networks.”In practice, albeit unintentionally, the rescue organisations enable the inhuman smuggling gangs to run their business. No German tax money should be used for that,” he said.Rescue organisations strongly reject the suggestion that their presence encourages people to attempt dangerous Mediterranean crossings.SOS Humanity managing director Till Rummenhohl described Wadephul’s claim as “fundamentally wrong”, saying academic studies had repeatedly found no evidence that rescue ships cause increased migration across the Mediterranean.The issue has also exposed political divisions within Germany, including between Merz’s conservative CDU/CSU and its coalition partner, the Social Democrats (SPD).In April, 128 MPs from the SPD, Greens and Left signed an appeal calling on the German government to push for a state-funded EU sea rescue program. The initiative also called for greater protection for civilian rescue organizations and ships operating under the German flag.Green MP Jamila Schäfer has described sea rescue as “not an optional extra, but a humanitarian duty”.Clara Bünger, the Left’s spokesperson on domestic and refugee policy, accused both Italy and Germany of double standards.”Punishing people for saving lives while at the same time cooperating with Libyan actors accused of the most serious human rights violations is hypocrisy of the most repellent kind,” she told Euronews.Bünger is calling for a state-organized civilian sea rescue program so that aid organiztions no longer have to shoulder the responsibility alone.The Sea-Watch 5 case comes at a time of already strained relations between Germany and Italy over migration.Since the EU’s new migration and asylum rules came into force in June, Germany has been pushing for the return of so-called Dublin cases — asylum seekers for whom Italy is considered responsible because they first entered the EU there before travelling on to another member state.Italy has resisted such transfers for years. Since 2023, it has rejected around 80,000 requests from European countries to take migrants back, citing pressure on its reception system. Since the new EU rules came into force, it has not taken back a single migrant from Germany.Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said at a Lega party meeting in Trento that Italy would, for the time being, continue to refuse transfers from Germany.”Germany has no right to send back even a single illegal immigrant to us as long as German NGO ships are operating in the Mediterranean to bring thousands of illegal immigrants ashore in Italy and Europe,” he said.Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi has also called for Germany to compensate Italy for migrants brought ashore by German rescue organizations.”My German counterpart and I share the view that the activities of the NGOs are a pull factor for irregular migration,” Piantedosi said.According to the Italian Interior Ministry, German organizations have brought around 22,500 migrants to Italy since Giorgia Meloni’s government took office in October 2022, accounting for more than half of those brought ashore by private rescue vessels over the same period.Piantedosi and German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt are expected to meet in the coming weeks in an attempt to resolve the dispute.Libya declared its own search-and-rescue region in the central Mediterranean in 2018, meaning its coordination center is recognized by Italy as the relevant authority for rescues within that area. Italian rules require rescue organizations to cooperate with the authorities responsible for coordinating operations, with failure to do so potentially resulting in sanctions.Sea-Watch and other rescue organizations challenge such cooperation, arguing that Libya cannot be considered a safe place for people rescued at sea and pointing to serious allegations of human rights abuses involving Libyan authorities.Human rights organizations have also repeatedly challenged European cooperation with Libya. In July, 31 groups, including Human Rights Watch, called on the EU and its member states to end cooperation with Libyan authorities on migration control, citing widespread abuses against migrants and asylum seekers.Sea-Watch and other NGOs have also stopped communicating with the rescue coordination center in Tripoli, arguing that doing so legitimizes authorities they accuse of endangering migrants and rescue crews.The Italian government, by contrast, argues that its approach is helping to reduce irregular migration across the Mediterranean. Piantedosi has pointed to falling arrival numbers and credited cooperation with Libya and Tunisia as one factor behind the decline.
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