In the early morning hours of Sunday, April 19, 2015, a 20-meter fishing boat, overloaded with people, capsized about 70 nautical miles off the Libyan coast and 180 kilometers (107 miles) from Europe. In the hours and days after the accident, this boat seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back. This shipwreck, with an estimated 800 dead, had seemingly brought a sense of humanity back to Europe. The accident became a test for Brussels and, for the eight weeks that followed, Europeans took a critical look at the purpose of their 28-country union.
On the day after the accident, with the bodies still drifting in the sea off Libya, European Union foreign ministers met in Luxembourg. It was a regular meeting, but very little of it was routine, and in light of the disaster, interior ministers were also in attendence. The sheer horror of the incident was palpable.
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