The FRA update shows that at the start of June 2025:
- Rescue capacity at sea remains constrained and inadequate: out of 47 non-governmental organisations’ (NGO) search and rescue boats and planes originally deployed in the Mediterranean, only 20 were operational.
- Search and rescue NGOs face continuous legal challenges: national authorities have initiated five new legal cases affecting NGO search and rescue operations since June 2024. This creates a total of 86 legal proceedings since 2017. Most cases are against vessels. One out of five are criminal proceedings against NGO staff or crew members. Other legal measures made NGO search and rescue harder.
This update draws attention to two pressing fundamental rights issues that need resolving:
- Protecting civil society from punishments and respecting legal safeguards: civil society organisations conducting life-saving search and rescue operations at sea must be better protected, as their actions are humanitarian in nature, not criminal. Existing legal safeguards need to be fully respected and such efforts should not be conflated with the facilitation of irregular entry.
- Increasing search and rescue capacities: search and rescue capacities at sea should increase to save more lives and prevent rescued people from being disembarked in places where they are put at risk.
This latest update provides a snapshot of developments from 2018 until 1 June 2025. It includes an overview of open and closed legal proceedings. There is also a map of operational NGO rescue assets, those under maintenance, and those that no longer operate.