A group of Libyan Coastguard and Navy personnel, selected to attend new training modules organised as part of the EU naval force in the Mediterranean, recently arrived at the Italian Navy Petty Officer Academy in Taranto.
The competent Libyan authorities have provided EUNAVFOR Med with a total of 87 candidates (Officers and Petty Officers) for the training, among whom are 3 tutors who will support the trainees during their stay in Italy.
The objective of the training is to increase the security of Libyan territorial waters, improving the capacities of the Libyan Coastguard and Navy to perform their duties, thus enhancing the capacity in basic maritime security skills, including search and rescue activities to save lives and to disrupt smuggling and trafficking from and to Libyan shores.
The trainees will attend two different training modules of respectively 8 and 3 weeks (“Patrol Boat Crew Training” and “Train the Trainers”), in line with the Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2016 by Rear Admiral Enrico Credendino, Commander of the EU-led Naval Operation "Sophia", and the Commodore Abdalh Toumia, Commander of the Libyan Coastguard.
Operation SOPHIA, launched on June 2015, is an EU military operation with the core task to contribute to wider EU efforts to disrupt the business model of human smuggling and trafficking networks in the Southern Central Mediterranean.
(Source: EUNAVFOR MED)
