Six hundred people drowning but no mayday call. Is this how Europe deters migrants? | Emily O'Reilly

I have investigated the EU border agency's role in the Adriana shipwreck. There is a chasm between rhetoric and reality

• Emily O'Reilly is the European ombudsman

When 600 people die on a summer's night in the Mediterranean, their journey known of, or witnessed for many hours and at various times by an EU agency, the maritime authorities of two EU countries, by civil society activists and by multiple private ships and boats - a journey and a drowning effectively in plain sight - there is one obvious question: How did that happen?"

My office has investigated the role of the EU Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex, in the events surrounding the capsizing in June 2023 of the Adriana, an overcrowded fishing boat en route to Italy from Libya, with an estimated 750 people on board. We explored how that most fundamental of human rights, the right to life, survives contact with those whose responsibility it is to manage our borders and save lives at sea.