Germany’s left-liberal ‘traffic light’ coalition, which this year has quietly overseen an influx of illegal migrants that is on par with the great European Migrant Crisis of 2015 and 2016, plans to fund an NGO that pays for vessels operating in the Mediterranean Sea to ferry undocumented foreign nationals from off the North African coast to continental Europe.
Beginning in 2023, the German federal government will begin allocating taxpayer funds to finance the United4Rescue—an association composed of hundreds of organizations—which endeavors to make it possible for NGO migrant transport vessels like the Ocean Viking, Sea-Eye 4, Sea Watch 5, and others to bring thousands of migrants, most of whom are single adult men, to Europe each year, Norddeutscher Rundfunk reports.
According to the Bundestag’s Budget Committee’s budget, United4Rescue will receive two million euros from the federal government—a payment that the organization is set to receive annually in subsequent years.
While speaking with French news agency AFP, budget politician Jamila Schäfer said: “We do not accept the deaths in the Mediterranean, but as a traffic light underline the importance of compliance with European law and humanitarian law.”
Derya Türk-Nachbaur, a ‘human rights expert’ for the leftist Social Democratic Party (SPD), said that through its funding of the pro-migration NGO, the governing coalition was sending an important signal that ‘saving lives’ was not a criminal offense but a humanitarian obligation.
News that the ‘traffic light’ coalition will begin its funding of United4Rescue at the beginning of next year comes one month after the EU-funded website InfoMigrants released a report that revealed, so far this year, 10,000 illegal migrants have been brought to Europe by the fleet of NGO ships currently operating in the Mediterranean. At the moment, seven NGO ships are carrying out migrant taxiing operations.
Authorities in the Greece, Italy, and France—the countries that end up receiving the vast majority of the migrants ferried by these NGO ships—have long suspected that links exist between the NGOs and human traffickers. In October, the Greek coast guard launched an investigation into the activity of human traffickers in Turkey and two well-known NGOs involved in the transportation of migrants.
