Malta, through the European Parliament and in particular the efforts of MEP Simon Busuttil, has achieved something of a small moral victory in that the European Parliament is to challenge the highly contentious Frontex guidelines approved at EU and European Parliament level before the European Court of Justice.

Malta had strongly objected to the rules and even boycotted hosting future Frontex operations under the current rules. And rightly so, since they provide that migrants saved at sea during Frontex missions would have to be taken to the mission’s host country, Malta, rather than the closest safe port of call.

The rules effectively meant that if Malta were to have hosted a Frontex mission this summer, which it has been doing in recent years, all migrants taken aboard patrols from the Libya-Malta-Italy migratory route would have been brought to Malta.

In what could be considered an albeit small victory for the country, the European Parliament this week agreed to refer the recently-adopted Frontex guidelines to European Court of Justice in order to challenge their validity on procedural grounds.

A motion to reject the rules was approved by the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties Committee but fell short of an absolute majority in the European Parliament required to throw them out in April.

Now, on the Maltese MEP’s insistence, the European Parliament is to challenge the European Commission with the argument that it had overstepped its remit and effectively abused its powers in presenting the rules in such a way that excluded the EP from making amendments, and instead leaving the EP with a take them or leave them scenario.

The EP, rightly so, is insisting that the rules should have been run through the regular legislative procedure that gives Parliament the possibility to have its say.

If that had been the case, it could be argued, the controversial clause providing for the landing of migrants rescued by Frontex patrols could have been amended to the agreement of all MEPs, as well to Malta’s satisfaction, which, it is believed, had only found serious fault with that one particular clause.

The initiative to take the Commission to the European Court of Justice was unanimously supported by Legal Affairs Committee, following the unanimous support of the Civil Liberties Committee. The ECJ is expected to rule on the case within the standard frame of around 18 months.

As matters stand, and we stand to be corrected as the summer season progresses, Malta has been relieved of the ailments and, for the most part, the EU level polemics it experienced as part of the migratory phenomenon.

Migrant arrivals and new asylum claims are basically non-existent, detention centres are all but closed down and the Armed Forces are back to business as usual, at least for the time being.

According to Frontex, the global financial crisis has contributed to this dramatic reduction in illegal immigration towards the European Union as a whole, as jobs become scarcer and countries crack down on undocumented migrants.

On a pan-European scale, figures from the first three months of this year, in fact, show that across the EU a downward trend that began last year is continuing. The number of irregular migrants attempting to enter the EU illegally fell by 33 per cent last year. Figures showed a downward trend in all indicators, including detections of attempts to cross the border illegally, denials of entry and those caught living in EU countries illegally.

Frontex cites the three main reasons for the drop in the migratory flow as a lack of employment opportunities in the EU due to the economical crisis, stricter migration and asylum policies in the EU member states, and the effective collaboration of countries of origin that agree to readmit immigrants caught and expelled from EU countries.

Malta’s case here differs from the rest of the EU. Firstly, Malta has never been able to offer very many employment opportunities for its resident migrant community, and it has always had the EU’s strictest migration policy through which any migrant is automatically detained for up to a year.

The one time it mass repatriated migrants to their country of origin, in 2002, it did so with disastrous consequences, with several of the Eritreans it had deported being subjected to well-documented horrendous torture and death while many others have never been heard from or seen since.

For Malta’s part, Frontex has seen a “strong and continued decrease” in the numbers of people attempting sea crossings into the EU towards Malta, Italy and Spain’s Canary Islands. This is evidenced in Malta by the comparatively negligible numbers of asylum seekers landing on Maltese shores last year. This, Frontex said, was attributable to “good collaboration from the African countries where immigrants usually depart”.

From Malta’s perspective, matters are more complex, and the collaboration with third countries also leaves a lot to be desired in terms of human rights. Libya has closed the doors leading out of the country, at least from its northern shores, and Italy has been practising a push back policy that has run afoul of the UNHCR and several human rights NGOs.

But now that the migration phenomenon has subsided, at least for the time being, the country needs to focus on the proper integration of those it has taken in so far, lest such communities run the risk of becoming ghettoised. It also should do some considerable soul searching on the way in which different sections of society had reacted to and handled the influx of irregular migrants in recent years. The reactions have ranged from utter revulsion from some quarters to rising to the humanitarian challenges before it in other quarters.

And while the EU continues to grapple with Malta and actually tries to place added burdens on a country that has been as overburdened by the migratory phenomenon as it has been, the EU has, in reality, done very little to ease those burdens.

Some member states have agreed to resettle handfuls of Malta’s migrants, but the EU’s ethos of solidarity and burden sharing has practically been put to shame by the United States, which has taken concrete action and resettled more than 500 of Malta’s migrants in the last two years.

EU initiatives, on the other hand, have so far not materialised in the kind of concrete assistance the country had been crying out for when it felt it was sinking under the migratory tide.

Malta is still waiting for its EU partners to stop bickering, to stop sitting on their hands and to agree to concrete, actionable solutions for the country. Perhaps they will, once the phenomenon has completely subsided and that help is no longer even needed.