Members of the European Parliament on Wednesday called on the European Union to save migrant lives by expanding its current border patrols to include "robust" search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
MEPs overwhelmingly backed a resolution urging the EU and its 28 member states to expand the mandate of the widely criticised Triton operation - which currently extends just 30 nautical miles from the Italian coastline - to include search and rescue operations.
"The EU and its member states should ensure that "search and rescue obligations are effectively fulfilled", stresses the resolution, which was approved by 449 votes to 130, with 93 abstentions.
It called for "a robust and permanent humanitarian European rescue operation" which all member states would pay for and contribute to.
The resolution called for tougher measures against people smugglers, a binding quota for distributing asylum-seekers among all EU countries, bigger contributions to resettlement programmes and better cooperation with migrants' home countries and with transit countries.
EU leaders tripled the funding to the bloc's Trident border mission at a summit last Thursday, but critics say the mission's mandate prevents it from getting close enough to Libyan waters, where most migrant deaths occur.
The issue gained new urgency on 19 April, when more than 800 people are believed to have died in a shipwreck 80 nautical miles north of Libya.
The UN refugee agency fears that over 1,750 migrants have already lost their lives in the Mediterranean this year - 30 times more than in the same period of 2014.
At last week's summit, EU leaders pledged to expand Triton's funding and assets but not its operating area. The leaders also agreed to crack down on smuggling networks, but did not agree on the number of refugees and legal migrants the bloc would accept or on a long-term strategy to end the current crisis.
If the crisis continues unabated, there could be 30,000 deaths at sea this year and Italy will have to handle 200,000 would be asylum-seekers landing on its soil, aid groups predict.
