For the second time in as many months, Malta has managed to assemble a number of European Union member states together to form an ad hoc ‘coalition of the willing’, if you will, to come together and share the relocation efforts for the 141 migrants picked up by the MV Aquarius in two separate rescue missions on Friday.
The group who arrived yesterday will be distributed across France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy and Spain, while Malta’s input to the affair will be the provision of a port and a logistical base.
Instead of a ‘burden–sharing exercise’, this week’s ad hoc agreement is being labelled a ‘responsibility-sharing exercise’, a far more palatable nomenclature.
Malta, as was the case with the Lifeline migrants, deserves commendation for its diplomatic and humanitarian efforts, and for having tempered its obstinacy to see it make a ‘concession allowing the vessel to enter its ports, despite having no legal obligation to do so’.
Other migrant vessels, including an NGO aircraft, it should be recalled, remain stranded in Malta with the government having denied all migrant rescue NGOs any quarter, and they are banned from both entering and exiting Maltese ports.
It is understandable that Malta is somewhat reticent about opening up the proverbial floodgates, the move, however, is fast earning Malta a somewhat sinister reputation. But where diplomacy may not have been employed to its full with such strong arm tactics, the diplomacy negotiated by the Muscat government to effect burden sharing when no such empathy existed before must have been no mean feat.
This time Malta managed to appeal to the good humanitarian sense of France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal and Spain; last time, with the Lifeline it was Luxembourg, Italy, France, Ireland, Portugal, Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway that answered the call.
This is yet another ad hoc agreement, which is not to be sniffed at and, in fact, is to be encouraged given the bloc’s less than enviable track record along such lines
But the only problem here is that the migration situation is far from an ad hoc one, it is constant that needs to be addressed with permanent ‘responsibility-sharing’ measures on an EU-wide level because it must be understood that the migrants we are speaking of are not headed for Malta, Italy or Spain in particular – they are headed for the wider European Union where they believe they will be given refuge.
As such, the hardest diplomacy is still to come as those who have been willing to help out in these last two incidents numbered just 10 EU states, with France and Luxemburg having flexed their humanitarian muscle twice now at Malta’s behest.
Given the encouraging yet far from satisfactory willingness to help from the majority of EU members states, there is clearly still a lot of convincing to do if we are to convert that these ad hoc agreements struck by Muscat into a permanent burden sharing structure.
That solution must at all costs at least include a functioning, Europe-wide asylum system with proper support for frontline states such as Malta, and the creation of shared responsibilities.
Anything short of that and the Aquarius and Lifeline sagas are only destined to repeat itself over and over again this summer, and months on end will be spent squabbling about who is to take care of the world’s most destitute, downtrodden and needy.
This is a prospect that Europe can ill-afford on so many levels.
Muscat may have found the formula in his combination of strong arm tactics with NGOs and diplomacy with his fellow EU leaders. This may backfire terribly in a humanitarian sense but, for Muscat, this could very well be a case of the end justifying the means.