SOS Méditerranée President François Thomas Says Sea Rescue Cannot Be Negotiated

François Thomas, president of SOS Méditerranée, said sea rescue is a duty that cannot be negotiated, reflecting on the central Mediterranean tragedy and the financial stakes to continue operations.

“Tuesday, May 21, in Genoa, at the prestigious Captain's Room of Palazzo San Giorgio, the headquarters of the Port System Authority of the Western Ligurian Sea, the launch event of the European project Airlabò, created to improve air quality in urban port areas, took place”

Arpal Liguria

On November 11, 2022, the port of Toulon welcomed the Ocean Viking, a vessel chartered by SOS Méditerranée, with 234 rescued migrants after more than three weeks of wandering at sea due to the lack of a port to receive them.

Carenews

Thomas said that during the Ocean Viking’s odyssey in November, the NGO carried out six rescues in Libyan and Maltese SAR zones, informed the authorities, and then filed more than 40 requests for disembarkation that were all refused.

He added that after three weeks of drifting, France agreed to open its doors because there was an urgent need to respond, describing it as “quite exceptional” and saying “This situation must not be allowed to happen again.”

In Genoa, the launch event of the European project Airlabò took place at the Captain's Room of Palazzo San Giorgio, headquarters of the Port System Authority of the Western Ligurian Sea.

Funded by the Interreg Italy-France Maritime Programme and lasting 24 months, Airlabò involves seven public and private partners across the five cooperation regions of Liguria, Tuscany, Sardinia, Corsica, and Région Sud in France.

El Mundo

The project aims to share good practices and build a shared strategy among ports, scientific bodies, and citizens to reduce emissions impacts at main hubs of the western Mediterranean, including Genoa, Livorno, Olbia, Nice, Bastia, Ajaccio, and Toulon.

Airlabò uses the Living Lab instrument, and its partners include the lead partner Fondazione Accademia Italiana della Marina Mercantile, with ARPAL participating as a technical-scientific body specialized in monitoring and modeling air quality.

Guillaume Picard, a former merchant navy commercial captain who transported containers and tourists in the Mediterranean for 30 years, joined Stop Croisières, an NGO with about a hundred activists targeting cruise ships flooding Marseille.

“Guillaume Picard has spent his entire life focused on that twinkling blue of the south of France”

El Mundo

Picard said the Vieux-Port docks 2.5 million cruise passengers a year and that commercial shipping is responsible for 10% of atmospheric pollution, while the Stop Croisières manifesto reads: “Nothing justifies maintaining these absurd and toxic floating cities.”

He emphasized a figure he attributed to AtmoSud, saying “In the city, 1,200 premature deaths a year are produced by the pollution generated by commercial shipping,” and argued that citizens bear a cost of €4 billion.

Picard also said, “My feeling of guilt is no greater than that of a truck driver or a bus driver,” and described the petition launched by Mayor Benoît Payan as backed by 50,000 citizens under the slogan “Marseille is suffocating.”