The same week that I mentioned in this space the lack of remedies available to those who are badly affected by an injustice or by a public project that has negative impacts for some, I got a letter describing the situation that the sender found himself in.
In part on the basis of EU funds, the government had launched a project to improve side roads in a stretch of countryside. By the time works were concluded, the channels through which rainwater got cleared ended up blocked. When the first rains came, surges of water swept over the land that this person had planted. They carried away all the soil. There was nothing left to harvest and there is no way the land there canbe used to good purpose.
The owner sought some compensation for what had occurred. No way. We checked about whether he could ask the European Commission to intervene. They assured us that they carried no responsibility for the material implementation of the project. This was attached uniquely to Malta.
It is not fair that the person concerned has been left dangling.
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Humanitarian
The whole question of how irregular migrants should be saved – if that is the right word – from death by drowning is framed as if the matter related to three parties only. The immigrants who are left to cross towards Europe in their boats. The NGOs which act as Samaritans by “saving” the former. And the governments of the countries where the NGOs decide to deposit the migrants.
We are told that the crisis is a humanitarian one, even if it ischaracterised by legal elements, and that it concerns only these three parties. The states involved must accept their humanitarian responsibilities.
To me, the argument is totally incoherent, from beginning to end. The humanitarian challenge does not simply consist in opening a country’s ports to immigrant arrivals. It also covers providing them with where to live and with what. Effectively as a humanitarian challenge it concerns all states. It is perhaps true that legally, it mostly concerns those who find themselves geographically close to the ongoing migration, but surely the legal implications go well beyond this aspect.
When the states of the central Mediterranean refuse to accept that the humanitarian and legal burdens of irregular migration should only be carried by them, they are right to do so.
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Italy and the rules
A huge controversy arose when the Italian government approved a budget for this year with increases in pensions and social benefits, as well as other measures that would boost expenditures. This was going to hugely increase the deficit in public finances and went against the rules of the euro zone.
As the defender of these rules, the European Commission came out against the Italian proposals. Later, following negotiations, a compromise was found. The Italian government would be postponing for a short while the implementation of its proposed measures and would implement them over a longer period. It would slash some other expenditure items and sell state assets in order to cut the deficit that would still ensue.
The Commission agreed that for the present, eurozone rules would thereby be respected. Commission vice President Dombrovskis stated however that Italy has simply carried the real problem over into the next year.
Meanwhile one could note that to cut expenses, the Italian government had simply curtailed capital outlays, those that is, which account for government investment. Other eurozone memberstates had done this before.