International organisations and rights groups have given a mixed reaction to
the European Union’s plan to triple the size of its naval search mission in the Mediterranean.

The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) welcomed the measures as an ‘important first step towards collective European action’.

It noted that the operation would now be comparable to Italy’s Mare Nostrum rescue force, which was ended six months ago, and said the key test was whether lives were saved and war refugees gained asylum.

There was partial approval from the international NGO Save The Children.

“Europe took a small step back from the moral abyss yesterday by increasing the search and rescue capacity and also by tripling the budget of Triton but there remains no clarity around the operational area of the search and rescue capacity or that it’s going to prioritise search and rescue rather than border control,” said Save The Children spokeswoman Gemma Parkin.

The EU’s move also leaves questions for commercial