More than 1,000 migrants arrive in Malta in irst two months of 2020 – PM
Migration issues were top of the agenda during a meeting held yesterday at Castille between Prime Minister Robert Abela and European Commissioner of Home Affairs Ylva Johansson.
In his opening address, Abela said that Malta has been facing increasing difficulties with regular arrivals of migrants. So far this year, more than 1,000 migrants have arrived in Malta, a worrying number when compared to the total of 3,400 migrants who came to Malta throughout the whole of 2019.
He believes that this is a problem which is even more worrying considering Malta’s small size.
He said that discussions on migration should focus on three main dimensions: communication with countries of origin, improvement of boarder surveillance and finding international solutions that show that we have learnt our lesson from measures that didn’t work.
“This is not a regional, but an EU problem. Unfortunately, discussions on solidarity and risk of disparity between member states seem to stop when discussing the regular migration issue and member states like Malta are left to themselves to solve this problem.”
“We can no longer accept that no concrete action is taken,” he stated while pointing out that Malta’s reception centres are almost full.
Ylva Johansson said that migration is an issue which needs to be tackled together. “It is possible to manage migration, it is a normal thing; it has always been there and always will be. Our task is to manage and control it,” he said.
Johnasson said that one of the approaches she is taking to tackle this situation is to reach out to all member states and discuss a way forward and a compromise.
“What we need to do is to regain trust between member states as we are losing trust between each other with regard to migration and we are paying a high price for that. We need to treat migration as a normal policy area to de-escalate and become more pragmatic in out solutions.”
She explained that different member states are having different geographical realities not only in the area of migration.