MSF Search and Rescue representative on the additional UE funding for Libya's border management

Rome, Italy - 20 October 2026: According to a letter from the European Commission President to EU leaders, last week the EU signed an additional €25 million in funding to expand migration cooperation into eastern Libya. The additional funding is meant to support border management, search-and-rescue and anti-smuggling activities in eastern Libya.

By pouring additional 25 million euros to border management in eastern Libya, the EU and its member states continue to outsource their dirty work.

This support should not be increased. It must stop.

The European Commission itself acknowledges that migrants, refugees and asylum seekers’s safety cannot be guaranteed in Libya. And yet, European support continues to knowingly enable interceptions at sea, and illegal pushbacks to a country where people in the move face high risk of arbitrary detention, torture, violence including sexual violence, and exploitation, which have been well documented over the years.

This collaboration includes funding the very same actors responsible for threatening and endangering civil search and rescue actors and people on the move in the Mediterranean Sea.

The EU and its member states must stop their harmful migration policies based on deterrence and externalization and ensure that every person rescued at sea is brought to a place of safety, where their rights and dignity are upheld and their basic needs met.

- Claire San Filippo, MSF Search and rescue representative