The migrants keep coming

Some two weeks ago, Malta accepted to allow the MV Lifeline to enter the Maltese harbour after a huge tussle among EU states as to who would take in the 230 migrants on board.

Two weeks later, only a handful of migrants, 52, have been taken off Malta to their new destination, France. A second batch of some 15 was yesterday sent to Luxembourg.

In other words, Malta is still hosting some 160 migrants from the Lifeline.

We said at that time, we would see more ships carrying migrants escaping from Libya. We did.

On Saturday, a double-decker fishing boat sailed out of Zuara with 450 migrants aboard. Once again, there were fiery declarations by Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini who ordered all Italian ports closed and who declared the migrants were Malta’s responsibility.

Once again there were the discussions and denials from Malta. At the end, Italian Prime Minister Conte phoned his Maltese counterpart and appealed for solidarity.

As we report in this issue, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat interpreted this as meaning Italy had accepted that the migrants were not Malta’s responsibility. Then, in a goodwill gesture, he accepted to take in some 50 of these migrants – Italy and Malta were to share one-fourth of the migrants.

As we report elsewhere, when Conte wrote to the other EU premiers, he was told off in no uncertain terms by Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who told Conte this model of sharing migrants is “the road to hell.”

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At the time of writing, there is no indication of when the rest of the 160 migrants from the Lifeline might go to their respective destinations. Nor is it clear which countries are agreeing to take in the three-quarters of the fishing boat migrants.

There are also some important questions on numbers.

First of all, according to the Italian media itself, Malta has just under 8,000 migrants, or 18.3 per cent for every 1,000 Maltese. Italy has 147,000 migrants or just 2.4 per cent for every 1,000 Italians.

Now according to a comment on our portal, “despite no boats coming to Malta in 2015-2017 Malta has had 1,600-1,700 asylum seekers each year, which means Italy has pushed over 5000+ asylum seekers to Malta in 2015-2017 through Malta-Italy ferry and through the Malta airport.”

We ask the government to confirm or deny these figures. And we then ask what steps the government will take to control this secondary influx of migrants.

In his radio interview yesterday, Prime Minister Muscat defended his decision as having been taken in the national interest. He also said he took the decision on his own responsibility as a prime minister. He added that if Malta refuses to offer solidarity, it will not be able to ask for solidarity should the need come up.

We ask, however, if the following considerations passed through his mind before he made his decision.

Did he insist that Malta was in the right and was not infringing international rules as Conte’s deputy had been saying?

Did he point out the wide divergence between the numbers of migrants in Malta and the numbers in Italy?

Did he point out that migrants from Italy have been moving en masse to Malta and did he ask to send them back?

Did he point out the difference between the landmass of Italy and of the other countries and that of Malta?

Did he ask for an apology from Salvini for all his incendiary speeches? Or at least for an assurance that relations between the two neighbouring countries would continue to be as excellent as they have always been?

The prime minister must then think very seriously about what constitutes the Maltese national interest and ask himself what will be the situation if the present influx of migrants continues.

We focus on the boat people but there are many more migrants coming in by plane and with the flimsiest of reasons. There are many more whose permits, such as they were, have expired and who should have left the country. There are many whose criminal behaviour should have led the courts to order their deportation from Malta.

Instead of all this, the prime minister once again regaled us with a show of weakness cloaked as reasonableness and solidarity. The Maltese public will not take this and the prime minister is seriously undermining his credibility. Worse, he is imperiling the national security.