Reading between the lines
The prime minister gives a sermon every Sunday. Carefully prepared, it is now being pre-recorded, so it might not be commenting on what happened the previous night, as happened yesterday when the migrants on board the coastguard ship Diciotti were released during the night.
So we are left reading between the lines to gain some insight more than the prime minister wanted us to understand.
For instance a week ago yesterday, Dr Muscat referred to the more than 100 migrants found living in atrocious conditions in a cow farm at Mriehel.
He put us right that these were not boat people but people with a regular visa who had flown from Italy to find jobs here. He did not tell us but recent research has revealed that while no boat people had come to Malta in the previous two years, the population of migrants had increased by some 5,000, all apparently sneaking in from Italy. Last Sunday Dr Muscat said the government was trying to find ways how to send these
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migrants back to Italy, seeing they did not have work permits. So yesterday we were waiting to hear from him whether his efforts had been successful and maybe that those migrants had been sent back. Instead, there was total silence. The prime minister spent most of his time berating (without mentioning him) Minister Matteo Salvini and pointing out, and bragging about, how Malta got more results by its politics of persuasion than (Salvini) got with his threats and tweets.
That is quite true even if the migrants from the Diciotti had meanwhile been spread among the bishops, Albania and Ireland. Dr Muscat could have added that Italy, which had promised to take a part of the migrants brought to Malta by the Lifeline or Aquarius, ended up by reneging on its commitment and taking none.
He also hinted at squabbles at the EU technical meeting on Friday and claimed that Malta was praised as a model country.
The problem, however, remains: what is Malta doing to plug the hole through which migrants from Italy are coming in with no restraint whatever?
Rather than the rather ineffective methods that can be used to round up the migrants already here and send them back, it would probably be more effective to stop them from coming in, in the first place. The government must choose between sailing too close to the Schengen rules or leaving Malta with all its front and back doors wide open so that we end up paying for someone else’s (Italy’s) neglect.
At least this time Malta did not volunteer to take in some of the Diciotti’s migrants and so stood up to all Salvini’s threats and orders of the past days that Malta must take them all in.
The prime minister is quite right: this is no way to run a policy. Threats and name-calling can work in a bar but not where relations between countries matter. And both Italy and Malta are bound by ethical principles not to let people drown and to help such people.