Five years ago, Italian and EU leaders stood in silence as they watched coffins pile up in a warehouse on the island of Lampedusa.
"Coffins of babies, coffins with the mother and the child that was born just at that moment. This is something that profoundly shocked me," Jose Manuel Barroso, then EU commission president, said following his visit.
It was early October 2013, when some 373 people had drowned off Lampedusa's coast in their efforts to seek help, asylum, and opportunitie...
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This article was produced in collaboration with the European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet). EDJNet is a platform for data-driven news on European affairs brought to you in up to 12 languages by a consortium of media and data journalists from all over Europe, which includes EUobserver.