Italy, the second Libyan war, and the Frontex Irini Operation
Authors:   University of Bucharest, Mustățea Mihaela 
Published: June 2023

In 2011, Libya plunged into a civil war after the outbreak of the Arab Spring, a revolutionary movement characterized by massive civil protests which tried to build democratic societies in the Middle East and North Africa and put to an end the old repressive political regimes. After several months of civil war and bombings over Libya, longtime Muamar Ghaddafi’s dictatorial regime fell. Although the U.S. did not directly intervene in Libya, it supported the overthrow of Ghadafi through the intervention of NATO, providing aerial support and airstrikes for the opposition force (it also established a no-fly zone over Libya, authorized by the United Nations). In 2014, contested parliamentary elections led to the formation of two rival political power centers — one in the east, based in Tobruk and backed by military commander Khalifa Haftar, and another in the west of the country, an UN-supported administration in the capital of Tripoli. Each side was supported by a variety of militias and foreign powers, who competed for influence and oil resources, raising fears that oil-rich Libya could become the theater of a regional conflict. In April 2019, Haftar and his forces, backed by Russia (the Russian military contractors of the Wagner Group), Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates launched an offensive to capture the capital. His campaign collapsed after Turkey and Qatar offered their military support to the Tripoli government with hundreds of Turkish troops and thousands of Syrian mercenaries, belonging to the Free Syrian Army. The outbreak of violence in Libya in April 2019 severely affected the institutional reunification and stability of the country. Warning that the situation in Libya could become "a second Syria", with a new large wave of refugees directed towards the EU, Germany offered to call a peace conference for the conflicting sides, held on 19th January 2020 under the auspices of the United Nations. The aim was to stop the military support for the civil war parties and uphold an existing UN arms embargo, re-launching the peace process for a political settlement, after nine months of fighting over the capital. Operation EUNAVFOR MED IRINI was launched by the European Union on 31 March 2020, as part of the European Union's contribution to the Berlin conference. The core task of the Operation is the implementation of the UN arms embargo on Libya through aerial, satellite, and maritime assets, an embargo that had been decided in 2016 by the United Nations Security Council Resolution. This ongoing mission replaced the Sophia Operation, which had been in place for five years, combating the organized crime and trafficking of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea. In June 2016, the European Council decided to extend Sophia’s mandate until July 2017, adding two supporting tasks: training the Libyan coastguards and contributing to the implementation of the UN arms embargo on the high seas off the coast of Libya. This paper attempts to analyze the response of the European Union to the Libyan crisis by launching the Irini operation, a military-naval Joint force, setting out to secure the Berlin Conference’s commitments. Finally, we try to explain if Italy which seems to have preferred to stay on the sidelines, succeeded in reinserting itself into the Libyan equation, a significant diplomatic area for the Chigi Palace.