EPP vice-chair: NGOs help smugglers
Smuggling migrants has become a global level crime, which calls for serious response, Hungarian governing party Fidesz MEP Kinga Gal wrote in a statement on Wednesday regarding the European Parliament’s debate entitled “Guidelines for Member States to prevent humanitarian assistance being criminalised”.
The European People’s Party’s vice-president reminded that NGO ships are picking up migrants by the shores of Libya, but instead of taking them back to the country a few miles away they are bringing them to the shores of Europe, hundred of kilometres away. “This practice has to end,”she stressed.
According to Gal, smugglers don’t care about people’s lives, they just leave them on the sea and NGOs are assisting this business, on which smugglers have earned 7 billion USD in 2016.
Fidesz MEP Livia Jaroka stressed during the debate that the current EU legislation doesn’t rule out the possibility of punishing those who help illegal immigrants and member states are free to impose sanctions.
Source: Hungary Journal
Photo: Kinga Gál (EP)
