Parliamentary conference

23 April 2025, 14h30, Palais de l’Europe, Room 1

Opening speech (check against delivery) by

Gianluca Esposito

Director General for Human Rights and Rule of Law

Council of Europe

Vice-President, Parliamentarians,

Mr Pahlke, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Mediterranean Sea has been called the largest graveyard on Europe’s shores. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) Missing Migrants Project has estimated that - since 2014 – over 30,000 migrants have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean Sea and over 1,000 on other routes within continental Europe.[1] Many of these tragedies occurred when ships sank off the coast of Lampedusa.

Nearly all these people will have paid smugglers huge amounts of money and endured violence along the way to their deaths. The statistics are staggering, but we should not forget that behind each number there is a human tragedy. 

This is why I warmly welcome the initiative of the PACE Committee on Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons and its rapporteur, Mr Pahlke, to organise this conference in Strasbourg today and tomorrow.

This conference brings together a great number of experts and decision-makers. I am sure it will create a momentum leading to more effective strategies and action for addressing the issue of missing migrants.

I particularly welcome all the humanitarian efforts pursued by so many NGOs, as well as the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies on the ground. Voluntary sea rescue operations are provided by several NGOs like the one Mr Pahlke worked with. There are numerous humanitarian organisations which must be praised for their help to irregular migrants, thereby actively working to prevent that migrants go missing or die on their desperate journey to reach Europe.

One of the key challenges in finding missing migrants relates to the issue of jurisdiction. Who is competent to investigate the missing? And even when we have identified the relevant jurisdiction, do prosecutors have the legal and practical ability to act?

Also, as legalistic as this may seem to some - I always insist in highlighting the difference between smuggling of migrants and trafficking in human beings – too often confused in the public discourse. The latter includes always a form of exploitation of the victim which may be - but is not necessarily present - in the former.

While the two phenomena are legally different, they may at times overlap. And this is often the case with missing migrants.

Migrants go missing for several reasons: they often die; but when they don’t, they may also be absorbed into organized criminal groups which exploit their vulnerabilities for their own benefit.

To tackle the phenomenon of missing migrants, international cooperation is key. No country alone can tackle it. And, might I add, international cooperation way beyond the EU. This is where the Council of Europe can play a key role.

And for international cooperation to work effectively, national legislation has to be compatible and enable – not hinder – cooperation.

We already have many tools in our toolbox at an intergovernmental level:

• Our Network of Prosecutors on Migrant Smuggling
• Our Network of National Focal Points
• Our platform for information-sharing through country-profiles on migrant smuggling prepared by member States
• Our ongoing work on defining safe third countries
• Our Guide for practitioners on administrative detention of migrants
• And last but not least the large funds provided by the Council of Europe Development Bank for action in participating States, for instance for housing, healthcare and school projects for migrants and displaced persons

But we can and must do more.

I am pleased that the Committee of Ministers mandated our European Committee on Crime Problems to draw up a new legal text to step up the fight against migrants’ smuggling. We will soon start this work.

This new text will most likely include measures to ensure coherent criminal laws across countries, more effective investigative tools, actions to protect victims, and to ensure swifter international cooperation.

In light of today’s event and all the work that the Parliamentary Assembly has done of the issue of missing migrants, I wonder whether this future legal text is not the right place to include also a chapter addressing some of the challenges countries face in dealing with missing migrants – starting from the problems of jurisdiction and of prosecutorial action. 

While this will ultimately be for member states to decide, I can assure you that we will consider this matter very carefully. After all, what we all want is to enable our national authorities to be better equipped to identify missing migrants. And this future legal text, could be a way to do so.

Thank you very much for your attention and cooperation, and I wish everyone a successful event.