NGOs and collusion with smugglers

18.4.2017

Question for written answer E-002726-17
to the Commission
Rule 130
Beatrix von Storch (EFDD)

With reference to the Commission’s answer to the first question in E‐000019/2017, the first paragraph answers a question that was not actually asked I therefore ask the question again:

• 1.Is the Commission aware that smugglers and search-and-rescue agencies are colluding or at least cooperating?

Mr Avramopoulos replied on behalf of the Commission that ‘The Commission has not received any official information from the competent national authorities about investigations or prosecution of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) involved in search and rescue (SAR) activities for having cooperated with criminal smuggling networks’.

The wording of this response seems particularly bizarre, if not downright evasive, given that these allegations were contained in a leaked report written by the EU’s own decentralised agency, Frontex.

2. Has it received any informal information on this topic, regardless of the source, and if so from whom?

Furthermore, the Commission might be aware of NGOs engaged in SAR cooperating/colluding with smugglers via its non-national authorities, i.e. decentralised agencies.

3. Has it received any formal information on this topic, regardless of the source, and, if so, from whom?