EU okays a special Navy that will deal with people smugglers

May 21 , 2015 Plans to establish a naval force to tackle the issue of people-smugglers operating from Libya have been Okayed by the European Union.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has said the idea is to launch the operation next month, with a headquarters in Rome under an Italian admiral, in an attempt to cope with the rise in the numbers of  illegal migrants from Africa and the Middle East who are crossing the Mediterranean Sea to reach Europe.

After a meeting with EU ministers, Ms Mogherini announced that the UK is playing the lead role at the UN Security Council in drafting a resolution that would give the EU a legal basis for using military force against people traffickers in a three phased naval operation which will include intelligence gathering on smugglers, Inspection and detection of smugglers’ boats and destruction of those boats

She is quoted as saying “It is not so much the destruction of the boats but the destruction of the business models of the (smugglers’) networks themselves,”