The figure of €30 million made it to the headlines twice during this past week.
On Wednesday, European Commissioner Jose Manuel Barroso led a delegation of top politicians to Lampedusa following the death of more than 300 people who, in their search for a new and better life, died when the boat they were on capsized. During the visit, Barroso pledged an extra €30 million to Italy for it to deal with the immigration phenomenon.
That same day, if not at the same hour, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said that the government plans to raise €30 million next year from the sale of citizenship rights to foreigners who wanted to settle in Malta. Maltese passports with all they bring with them – including European citizenship – will be available at €650,000.
The two issues are not directly connected, but they do intertwine. For one thing, it was Joseph Muscat who threatened to push immigrants back to where they had come from early this summer, with all the bad vibes against Malta that this created in the international scenario. Now, the same Prime Minister who closed the door in the face of people who desperately needed assistance has opened up Malta’s shores to others, so long as they come with several platinum cards and fat bank accounts.
There were moments during the course of the summer when Malta took a hard-line approach to irregular migration. Some have argued that this is the right way forward, whereas others replied that people about to drown cannot be abandoned. There were instances when our hospitality – for which we have become known to the rest of the world over many centuries – was questioned. On one occasion, when Malta refused entry to immigrants who had been rescued by a cargo ship, and who later ended up being taken in by Italy, this country was labelled as heartless, while our Italian neighbours were described as heroic.
Of course, in an ideal world, nobody would need to leave home and everything else behind him or her to risk their life on flimsy boats in an attempt to make a new life in a foreign country with a different culture, a different language and different rules. But there is no such thing as an ideal world.
But Malta’s intransigence in accepting that it must act humanely in these situations cost us heavily in the eyes of the rest of Europe. Yes, more must be done to tackle the phenomenon. Yes, I do agree with Nationalist MEP David Casa who this week said that we have had enough of words and some kind of action is needed. Yet, at the same time, we cannot draw attention to the problems migration is causing us in the wrong way, as this government has done.
To be fair, Joseph Muscat and his government have acted in a softer, albeit determined, way, following the last two tragedies involving migrants, which have claimed the lives of more than 350 people within a space of 10 days. The Prime Minister has remained adamant in his stand that Malta needs all the help it can get because it is “not a problem for Malta, but a problem for the whole of Europe”. He has said that he will keep up the pressure on Europe to turn words into action, because no more lives need be lost before something concrete is done. His phrase that the Mediterranean should “not become a cemetery” has been picked up by most international media. But, on the other hand, he has toned down the aggressiveness he showed in July, and this I see as a positive step.
Who knows, that €30 million, or a part of it, could have come Malta’s way, had we behaved differently on that occasion.
It’s not that money is the solution to the problem. The phenomenon has deeper roots and it is not just a question of having the resources to deal with it. But extra millions from the EU would have gone a long way towards giving us the financial assistance needed until a more permanent solution is implemented.
These “extra millions” will now come from the sale of citizenship rights to people with money. Dr Muscat expects €30 million to flow into the national coffers from people interested in having access not to Malta, per se, but to Europe as a whole. Our passport is a European document, and those who have it will have all European doors open to them, something which, ironically, Dr Muscat had fought against in the run-up to European membership.
This idea came as a surprise, as it was not in the Labour Party’s election programme, and yet it seems to be so important for the government that it was given top priority. I also wonder what the European Union will say about on the subject. It is also quite strange that a party which battled against the privatisation of public entities on the grounds that Nationalist administrations were selling the country’s silver is now selling the country’s soul.
What I do hope is that Malta will not be turned into a haven for people with dubious intentions who could see Maltese citizenship as providing an opportunity to carry out their shady dealings. Dr Muscat has promised that all applications will be strictly vetted, but given that a man blacklisted by the World Bank is being utilised by the government to establish contacts overseas is not a good indication.
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