(AP) The European Union’s top court ruled Monday that national maritime authorities cannot impound ships involved in search-and-rescue work on suspicion that they might be overloaded due to the number of migrants they plucked from the sea.
The European Court of Justice ruling came in response to an appeal by German migrant aid group Sea-Watch. Two of the German group’s ships were forced to undergo inspections in Sicily in 2020 after disembarking migrants for taking aboard more people than they were authorized to carry.
Italian harbor authorities also considered that the ships were not certified for search-and-rescue missions.
But the court said that rescued people “must not be taken into account when verifying whether the rules on safety at sea have been complied with. The number of persons on board, even if greater than that which is authorized, cannot therefore, in itself, constitute a ground for a control.”
