Despite massive criticism from civil society and politicians, the Bundestag’s Budget Committee decided yesterday to completely cut funding for civil sea rescue. This means that the previous support of two million euros per year, which had been supporting humanitarian rescue operations in the Mediterranean since 2022, will no longer be available. Between October 2023 and February 2025, state-supported missions by Sea-Eye saved an additional 747 people from drowning. The complete elimination of these funds will have a concrete impact on rescue operations and the chances of survival for people in distress at sea.

“This decision is a political declaration of bankruptcy – and a slap in the face for all those who have been involved in civil sea rescue for the past 10 years. People seeking protection will pay for this decision with their lives with fewer rescue missions being planned and financed by organisations such as Sea-Eye. This will only make the passage across the Mediterranean even more dangerous,” says Gorden Isler, chairman of Sea-Eye e.V. “We will not give up. While this government is content to count the dead, we will continue to save lives.”

Sea-Eye and Campact had protested against the planned cuts on the morning before the decision and handed over a petition with 93,724 signatures to Britta Haßelmann and Ricarda Lang (Alliance 90/The Greens). But the protest remained unheard.

“It is no coincidence that the federal government is cutting funding at precisely the moment when sea rescue organisations are being massively criminalised and blocked – it is a political decision with deadly consequences,” criticises Gorden Isler.

Despite the funding cuts, Sea-Eye has pledged to continue its rescue operations – with the support of civil society:

 “We would like to thank the tens of thousands of people who stand with us against this policy of isolation. It is their support that keeps us going. And as long as we have the opportunity, we will continue to rescue people – because every life saved counts,”  Gorden Isler emphasises.

Ten years after Alan Kurdi’s death, the lack of safe passage for refugees still forces people to flee across the Mediterranean

On Sunday morning at around 9 a.m., the crew of the SEA-EYE 5 reached a distress case reported by the organisation Alarm Phone. Within a few hours, the crew was able to rescue 144 people who had been at sea for days on an unseaworthy wooden boat. 

Dr Giovanni Cappa, on-board doctor on the SEA-EYE 5 for German Doctors e.V. , reports:

“Several of the people on board were dehydrated and malnourished. Among those who were rescued was a pregnant woman. Several people were in critical condition and required immediate medical attention. This was a challenge for the entire crew, who had to provide care while also looking after such a large number of people in distress.”

Two people in critical condition required medical evacuation. The two medical emergencies were taken over by an Italian coast guard vessel south of Lampedusa, along with 51 other people.

After the rescue operation, the Italian authorities instructed the SEA-EYE 5 to take the remaining approximately 100 people to the port of Taranto, some 40 hours away. As the all-weather lifeboat is not designed to transfer such a large number of people over a long distance, the crew repeatedly asked the Italian authorities to allow them to disembark the people at a closer port – in vain.

“Despite our ongoing support, the people on board are forced to endure extreme temperatures on deck, with very limited space, and for a prolonged period of time due to the distant port of disembarkation assigned to us. Under these conditions, their health can only worsen”, Dr Giovanni Cappa warns.

Late on Monday afternoon, the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre sent a navy ship to escort the SEA-EYE 5 to Taranto.

“Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of the deaths of Alan Kurdi, his brother Ghalib and his mother Rehanna. It is shameful that ten years later, we still have not created safe passage for refugees, but that even in 2025, people are still forced to undertake life-threatening escapes across the central Mediterranean. European governments have not only failed to establish a state run sea rescue programme, but are also actively hindering the work of civil aid organisations. The fact that they are thinking up particularly creative ways of harassing people who have been rescued, exposing them to further stress and health-threatening hardships after everything they have been through, is simply perfidious,” says Gorden Isler, chairman of Sea-Eye e.V.

A quiet decision during the parliamentary summer recess that dangerously reduces the chances of survival for people fleeing.

Context & background

• The German federal government, made up of the CDU/CSU and SPD, plans to completely withdraw the annual funding of around two million euros to organisations such as Sea-Eye, SOS Humanity, Sant’Egidio and others from 2026. 
• Now, the Budget Committee has decided that financial support for civil sea rescue operations should already be withdrawn this year. According to the Foreign Office, the amount was still around 900,000 euros in the first quarter of 2025, which means that organisations will have to fill a gap of around 1.1 million euros in 2025.
• Sea-Eye warned that the loss of government support could lead to missions being cancelled and rescue ships possibly having to remain in port.
• At the SPD federal party conference in June, the Social Democrats (SPD) voted by a large majority in favour of continuing civil sea rescue operations. However, the draft budget for 2026 does not contain any funds – the SPD parliamentary group remains inactive.
• Foreign Secretary Johann Wadephul (CDU) had already declared at the end of June that he rejected funding for civil society sea rescuers. Civil sea rescue was an ‘inappropriate method,’ he said. 
• Chancellor Friedrich Merz also expressed his opposition on Sandra Maischberger’s talk show. Civil sea rescue was ‘not a task for the private sector,’ he said.

“The dispute over civil sea rescue is a core conflict in democratic politics. After all, who decides in a democracy whether human rights are enforced or abandoned – party conferences or budget committees? It is shocking how the federal government is trying to quietly and secretly shirk its responsibility during the parliamentary summer recess. Sea rescue is a cornerstone of civilisation in our treatment of people fleeing their homes. We continue to insist on continued funding,” says Gorden Isler, chairman of Sea-Eye e.V.

Between October 2023 and February 2025, state-supported Sea-Eye missions saved an additional 747 people from drowning. 

32 organisations demand the immediate ending of the systematic obstruction of non-governmental search and rescue (SAR) efforts by the Italian state. In the past month alone, NGO vessels have been detained three times due to legal restrictions based on allegations under the “Piantedosi decree” – one of them, the monitoring vessel Nadir operated by RESQSHIP, got detained twice in a row. Deliberately keeping non-governmental search and rescue organisations away from the Central Mediterranean causes countless more deaths at sea on one of the deadliest flight routes worldwide.

Despite numerous alerts raised by SAR organisations, NGO vessels continue to be arbitrarily detained since the adoption of the “Piantedosi decree” in January 2023, aggravated by the conversion into law of the “Flussi decree” in December 2024. In the last month, Nadir and Sea-Eye 5, two of the smaller vessels operated by RESQSHIP and Sea-Eye, were detained on accusations of not complying with authorities’ instructions. Both crews were assigned very distant ports and asked for partial transshipments of people based on vulnerability criteria, despite the fact that a proper vulnerability assessment needs a safe environment and can not be conducted aboard a ship and directly after a rescue. 

Implementing legal and administrative obstructions serves an obvious goal: to keep SAR vessels away from their operational areas, drastically restricting their active presence at sea. Without the presence of NGO assets and aircrafts, more people will drown while fleeing across the Central Mediterranean, and human rights violations as well as shipwrecks will occur unnoticed. Smaller vessels play a crucial role: they monitor the route, provide first aid to people on boats in distress and, when necessary, embark the people until the arrival of better-equipped vessels.

Since February 2023, NGO ships have been subjected to 29 detentions, amounting to a total of 700 days in harbours instead of rescuing lives at sea. They spent an additional 822 days at sea navigating to reach assigned ports at unjustifiable distances, amounting to 330,000 kilometres of navigation. What initially only affected non-governmental SAR vessels has now been extended also to smaller monitoring ships.

In addition, NGOs spend a huge amount of time and financial resources appealing Italy’s restrictive legislation and the administrative detentions arbitrarily imposed on them.

In previous months, national courts – in Catanzaro, Reggio Calabria, Crotone, Vibo Valentia, and Ancona – issued decisions recognising the detention of NGO rescue ships at port to be unlawful and, as a consequence, they annulled the related fines. In October 2024, the Brindisi Tribunal asked the Italian Constitutional Court to assess the compatibility of the “Piantedosi decree”, converted into law in February 2023, with the Italian Constitution. On the 8^th of July 2025, the Constitutional court re-established that the Law of the Sea cannot be circumvented by punitive and discriminatory norms and any order contrary to it is to be considered illegal and illegitimate.

Non-assistance is a crime!

Under international maritime law, every shipmaster has the obligation to assist persons in distress at sea. Likewise, any state operating a Rescue Coordination Centre is legally bound to facilitate and ensure timely rescue operations. Yet today, what we are witnessing is not a state failure, but a pattern of deliberate violations: withholding information about distress cases, coordinating with the so-called Libyan coast guards for illegal pullbacks – even within Maltese waters – and allowing Frontex aircraft to observe shipwrecks and violent interception without intervening.

These practices are a blatant violation of the SOLAS Convention, the SAR Convention, UNCLOS, and the principle of non-refoulement. When states obstruct rescue activities instead of enabling them, they are not enforcing the law, they are breaking it.

Background

In December 2024, the “Flussi decree” (converted by Law 145/2024) concerning migration and asylum legislation passed by the Italian government came into force. It tightens the already restrictive provisions of the “Piantedosi decree”, ranging from fines to the detention and permanent confiscation of search and rescue vessels . The new provisions facilitate the confiscation of vessels by holding shipowners liable for repeated violations regardless of the captain, and hence represents a further escalation in the targeted obstruction of the work of SAR NGOs in the Central Mediterranean.

Ten years ago, search and rescue NGOs started filling the lethal gap left by the EU and its Member States in the Central Mediterranean. While the EU increasingly focuses on border control and border externalisation to prevent any arrivals of people on the move to European coasts, more than 175.500 people have been rescued by NGO ships since then. Nevertheless, since 2017, SAR actors have been increasingly exposed to criminalisation and systematic obstruction due to restrictive laws and policies, which contradict international maritime law and human rights.

We demand:

• The immediate repeal of the Piantedosi and Flussi decrees, putting an end to inhumane requests for rescue ships to perform partial disembarkation and stopping the assignment of distant ports. As requested by international maritime law, those who have just been rescued should be disembarked without delay at the closest place of safety; they should not be made to endure long journeys due to political calculations.
• The immediate release of the monitoring sailing vessel Nadir and the end to the obstruction and criminalization of non-governemental SAR activities.
• That EU member states fulfil their duty to rescue people at sea and comply with international law. The authorities should provide all NGO ships with the necessary support in the coordination of rescues in order to take their responsibility to assist people in distress.
• The establishment of a EU-financed and coordinated search and rescue programme.
• Safe and legal pathways to Europe to prevent people from being forced onto unseaworthy boats and embarking on difficult and sometimes deadly journeys.

Signatories:

1. Association for Juridical Studies on Immigration (ASGI)
2. borderline-europe, Human rights without borders e.V.
3. Captain Support Network
4. Cilip | Bürgerrechte & Polizei 
5. CompassCollective
6. CONVENZIONE DEI DIRITTI NEL MEDITERRANEO 
7. EMERGENCY
8. European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
9. Gruppo Melitea 
10. iuventa-crew
11. LasciateCIEntrare 
12. Maldusa project
13. Médecins Sans Frontières
14. MEDITERRANEA Saving Humans
15. MEM.MED Memoria Mediterranea 
16. migration-control.info project
17. MV Louise Michel project
18. Open Arms 
19. RESQSHIP
20. r42 Sail And Rescue
21. Refugees in Libya
22. Salvamento Marítimo Humanitario (SMH)
23. SARAH-Seenotrettung 
24. Sea-Eye
25. Sea Punks e.V
26. Sea-Watch
27. SOS Humanity
28. SOS MEDITERRANEE
29. Statewatch
30. Tunisian Forum for Social and Economic Rights FTDES
31. United4Rescue 
32. Watch the Med Alarm Phone