Following the Libyan Coast Guard’s latest attack, in August 2025, on people seeking safety and humanitarians, funded with EU money, 42 humanitarian and civil society groups sent a joint letter to the European Commission to cut the Libyan Coast guard funding.
For over a decade, EU cooperation with Libyan authorities has legitimised and enabled systematic violations of human rights, leaving people seeking protection with an impossible choice between drowning at sea or facing torture, arbitrary detention and extortion in Libya.
The Commission’s refusal to suspend cooperation, even while acknowledging investigations into attacks, shows clear complicity and disregard for international law. This must stop and no one should support a Commission that pursues a racist agenda.. Saving lives is not a crime, it is a legal and moral duty.
Left MEP Estrella Galán (Sumar, Spain) said: “The Ocean Viking attack is not an isolated incident but part of a broader pattern of EU border externalisation and the criminalisation of solidarity with migrants. The EU must end its complicity in human rights violations by the so-called Libyan authorities, launch a state-led SAR operation in the Mediterranean, and open safe pathways to protection.”
Europe cannot claim to defend human rights abroad while financing attacks on people at its borders. To restore credibility and humanity, the EU must put human dignity before border control. The Left joins the call of 42 humanitarian and civil society groups to end this complicity.
