European Governments Brace for Post-Lockdown Migrant Surge

European governments are seeing migrant numbers swell once again and they still have not settled on a coherent policy to cope with another influx.

Their dilemma was underlined Monday when the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that more than 50 migrants had drowned after their boat sank off the coast of Libya, 120 kilometers east of the capital Tripoli. Federico Soda, the IOM's Libya mission chief, tweeted: “At least 57 people drowned today in the latest tragedy... Silence and inaction are inexcusable.” Survivors told the IOM 20 women and two children were among those who drowned. The IOM repeated its call for EU governments to boost their own search and rescue missions and to halt their coordination with Libyan security forces for migrants to be intercepted and returned to Libya, one of the main gateways to Europe for war refugees and economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Mideast.