EU EXTERNAL PARTNERS: NGO report highlights fatal consequences of EU externalisation policies – ICC asked to examine potential involvement of European officials in crimes committed by Libyan authorities against people on the move – Joint Libyan…

• A new NGO report has warned that the EU’s externalisation policies have made asylum journeys increasingly deadly.
• A group of human rights lawyers has asked the International Criminal Court to investigate European officials for their potential involvement in crimes against humanity over the EU’s migration policies in the Mediterranean.
• A joint Libyan delegation has made an official visit to Brussels and Warsaw.
• There have been more reports of violence committed by the Libyan Coast Guard against people on the move in the Mediterranean.
• A new NGO report has revealed a sharp rise in violent attacks at sea by Libyan authorities in the past decade.
• The EU has held its first-ever summit with Egypt.

A new NGO report has warned that the EU’s externalisation policies have made asylum journeys increasingly deadly. The report by Doctors Without Borders (MSF) focuses on the EU’s agreements with Türkiye, Libya, Niger, Sudan, Egypt, and Tunisia. The authors conclude that the EU measures the success of these deals mainly in terms of the reduction in number of irregular arrivals in Europe whilst disregarding their humanitarian, political and security costs. They also argue that by persisting with such arrangements, the EU is effectively accepting their devastating human consequences (i.e. thousands of deaths and severe physical and mental harm to people forced onto ever more dangerous migration routes) and they have called on it to urgently review all co-operation agreements, programmes and activities that outsource border control to third countries.

A group of human rights lawyers has asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate European officials for their potential involvement in crimes against humanity over the EU’s migration policies in the Mediterranean. On 16 October, the group, which is led by Omer Shatz and Juan Branco, filed a 700-page legal brief which identifies 122 European figures ranging from heads of state to bureaucrats as “co-perpetrators” with Libyan authorities in the deaths of some 25,000 people seeking asylum and the torture, rape, and enslavement of approximately 150,000 others who have been forcibly transferred to Libya. It follows a previous request in 2019 which called on the ICC to investigate European officials over the “interception, detention, torture, killing and drowning of tens of thousands of people trying to reach European shores” but which did not mention any suspects by name.

A joint Libyan delegation has made an official visit to Brussels and Warsaw. During the visit, which took place 14-16 October, the delegation of officials from both Tripoli and Benghazi held a series of technical meetings with the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Home Affairs. According to the Libya Observer newspaper, Libyan and European officials agreed to “intensify efforts to return irregular migrants to their home countries and to strengthen border management across Libya”. The visit was criticised by a number of NGOs who are opposed to the EU’s continued co-operation with Libyan authorities despite the repeated accusations of human rights abuses that have been levelled against the latter. Describing the visit as “absolutely outrageous”, Bérénice Gaudin from the search and rescue (SAR) NGO Sea-Watch said: “Frontex and the European Commission are now rolling out the red carpet on EU soil for militiamen who shoot at migrants and our rescue vessels”.

There have been more reports of violence committed by the Libyan Coast Guard against people on the move in the Mediterranean. On 12 October, the NGO Alarm Phone reported that a boat carrying 140 people in Malta’s SAR zone had been fired upon by militiamen linked to the Tariq Ben Zeyad Brigade (Libyan National Army). The SAR NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans confirmed that three people had been injured and that one of them was in a coma. Both Alarm Phone and Mediterranea Saving Humans reported that they had notified both the Italian and Maltese authorities about the incident. They noted that the Italian authorities had responded to the distress call 24 hours after the shooting and had launched an investigation but that the Maltese authorities had reportedly denied receiving the distress call and stated that they could neither “confirm nor deny” that the incident had taken place.

A new NGO report has revealed a sharp rise in violent attacks at sea by Libyan authorities in the past decade. The report by the SAR organisation Sea-Watch documents 60 violent incidents since 2016 involving Libyan militias. The NGO noted that the number of recorded attacks had increased from just three in 2016 to 11 in both 2023 and 2024, and that there had already been nine in the first nine months of 2025. They also warned that the true number of incidents was likely to be much higher.

The EU has held its first-ever summit with Egypt. Ahead of the summit, which took place on 22 October in Brussels and which followed the signing of the EU-Egypt Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership in March 2024, several members of the European Parliament wrote to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa to urge them to challenge Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi over human rights abuses in his country. Their call was echoed by a group of international and Egyptian human rights NGOs who issued a joint statement in which they urged the leaders to “recognise the central role of human rights to the summit’s objectives of ‘shared stability and prosperity’”. Separately, ECRE member organisation Amnesty International insisted that EU leaders “call on the Egyptian President to undertake urgently needed, concrete and long overdue human rights reforms”.

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