EU paid 6,2 million euros to smuggling network

On June 18, 2017, Italy documented how the Iuventa of the Berlin NGO Jugend hilft worked with smugglers off Libya and brought charges against the person responsible, Pia Klemp, and nine other crew members for aiding human trafficking. Since then, the NGOs knew that they had to find a way to find the illegal migrants on the high seas without making direct contact with the gangs of smugglers.

That is why the NGO Watch the Med/AlarmPhone was brought into being from the Berlin “cultural center” Mehinghof, which also serves as the headquarters of the NGOs  Mare Liberum, Sea Watch and the research company Flucht & Migration eV, in order to give “those affected by distress at sea a second option” to relay “their call for help to the coast guards”, as their website notes. “A case is documented in real time and further support is mobilized if necessary. In this way – as far as possible – pressure is exerted on those responsible to prevent human rights violations such as pushbacks.”

The AlarmPhone telephone number is distributed “largely in direct contact with refugee communities in the important transit countries of North Africa and in Turkey”, according to the website.

The Greek authorities have been investigating for a year and have now been able to demonstrate how the German NGOs Watch the Med/AlarmPhone, Mare Liberum, Sea Watch and the research company work together to promote illegal migration to Europe. According to the research company, Alarmphone set up a control center in Izmir after the “closure” of the Turkish border in order to coordinate the illegal crossings to Greece.

According to the Hungarian government, the Med/AlarmPhone is supported by Soros-financed “Pro Asyl”, which works closely with tax-financed organizations such as the Evangelical Diakonie, the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband, the German Red Cross, Caritas, the Arbeiterwohlfahrt, the Malteser, the Federal Association of Networks of Migrant Organizations (Nemo) and the umbrella association of migrant organizations (DaMigra).

The Med/AlarmPhone also maintains a “cooperation” with the Soros-related NGOs “Borderline Europe” and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), which are financed from the EU budget.

Borderline Europe received 140 250 euros from the EU in 2015 for the project “Controversies in European Migration Policy – Granting Protection Versus Border Security” and in 2017 145 000 euros for the project “Bridges instead of walls – Strategies against the stigmatization of refugees”. The European Council on Refugees and Exiles was involved in projects from 2015 to 2019 according to the EU’s FTS financial transparency portal, which were funded to the tune of 5 970 210 euros. Of this, EUR 549 970 went directly to ECRE, and the remaining EUR 5,4 million were not broken down individually.

From 2015 to 2019, a total of 6 255 460 euros went to projects and NGOs related to “Med/AlarmPhone”.

The EU budget rapporteur Joachim Kuhs (AfD) told PI-NEWS: “It is unacceptable that the EU finances NGOs with the taxpayers’ money of hard-working EU citizens that have been set up by an EU country to set up a criminal organization and charged with smuggling. We will ensure that EU funding for human traffickers comes to an end.”