IT IS one thing to be tasked with saving the lives of vulnerable migrants in the Mediterranean. It is another thing altogether to try to do this without any boats. But this is the job that confronts Vice-Admiral Enrico Credendino, the commander of Operation Sophia, a naval mission organised by the European Union.

The mission was established in 2015 as part of the EU’s response to a crisis that saw over a million undocumented migrants enter Europe that year. A large contingent came from Syria, via Turkey and Greece, but many Africans also made the perilous journey across the Mediterranean from Libya in search of a better life. Operation Sophia, launched at the behest of the Italian government but with support across the EU, was supposed to be a military mission. Supplied, at first, with 19 boats, its objective was to disrupt people-traffickers, many of whom were operating out of Libya. It trained the Libyan coastguard and navy, and helped implement a UN arms embargo off the coast. But in practice, the mission (named after a baby girl born on a rescue boat) was also a humanitarian operation. It has rescued over 44,000 people at sea.

But Operation Sophia has become the victim of an anti-migrant backlash in Europe and of quarrels about the regulations governing disembarkation and asylum within the EU. Most people rescued in the Mediterranean have been brought ashore in Italy. Under EU law known as the Dublin regulation, Italy has been responsible for taking care of rescued people and processing their asylum applications. An increasingly frustrated and now populist government in Rome is using Operation Sophia as leverage to try and force their European neighbours to agree on changes to the Dublin regulation. In December, after European ministers failed to agree on where rescue services should take migrants ashore, Italy said the rescued could no longer come to their ports. Germany in turn withdrew its boat from the project, out of apparent frustration with Mr Salvini’s policy. Over months, the project had become more difficult to operate. But rather than ending Operation Sophia altogether, ministers agreed on an unhappy compromise in March: the mission could continue, but without any vessels on the water. It now relies on aeroplanes and the Libyan coastguard to do the job of disrupting smuggling networks.

In recent years migrants seeking to enter Europe have shifted the focus of their attention. In 2016 8,000 arrived by sea in Spain; in 2018 59,000 did. And those who still try to cross the central Mediterranean are attempting longer, more dangerous journeys in flimsier craft that they can hide more easily. As a result the fatality rate for this group is already seven times higher this year than it was in 2018. Human-rights groups also worry that EU co-operation with the Libyan coastguard may be harmful to migrants. They are no longer taken to Italy but are placed in Libyan detention centres where there is a high likelihood of torture, sexual violence, extortion and forced labour. All of which leaves European leaders facing tricky decisions. They may be having some success in reducing the number of undocumented migrants reaching Europe via the central Mediterranean, but the risks to those who choose to make the trip remain considerable.