Azzjoni Nazzjonali has put forward its 10 proposals of unilateral action that Malta can pursue on its own in order to stem the influx of illegal immigrants. Shortsighted opinion columnists and exponents of the other three parties have all attempted to rubbish these proposals. They evidently still entertain the delusion that our best strategy is to persist in our so far futile exercise of soliciting the EU for burden sharing. They still maintain that this help will be forthcoming at some stage in the future – in the meantime we should continue to discuss!

Well, our EU colleagues have done nothing so far to alleviate our problems, not even in the good times when the European economy was booming and calls for immigrant workers were a routine occurrence.

I for one cannot see any help coming when the global economy is now so deep in the doldrums. Indeed I would not be surprised if the EU as an institution collapsed under the current and increasing pressure. Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany recently circulated a memo to all EU member States that unless the countries of Eastern Europe are bailed out to the tune of €190 billion then “a significant economic crisis in Eastern Europe would trigger political tensions and immigration pressures”. To make sure that his European colleagues got the message he threw in an ominous punch-line “With a Central and East European population of around 350 million of which 100 million are in the EU, a 10 per cent increase would lead to at least five million additional unemployed within the EU.” The result would be “a flood of unemployed immigrants travelling to Western Europe in search of jobs”.

His memo was immediately endorsed by nine Central and Eastern European countries – Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania. They held an “unprecedented breakaway summit” and presented the rest with what amounted to an ultimatum.

So the possible burden sharing by a third of the member States disappeared before you could spell ‘solidarity’. Not only will they take no immigrants, on the contrary, they will flood us with theirs if their economies are not bailed out.

However, despite all the rhetoric, it seems little to no help will be given to the collapsing east. Already quaking in its boots at the prospect of setting a precedent by possibly bailing out Ireland and Austria, Germany summarily dismissed the call for an “Eastern Europe aid fund”.

In Britain things are not much better. Fear is increasing that the normally placid British have had enough of immigration and a collapsing economy. A leading Sunday paper published the story of a “MI5 alert” on the expected riots over there in summer. In the piece there is a suggestion that the government is so concerned about the possible breakdown of law and order that the Army has been put on standby. Other reports mention “confidential sources maintain that the MoD was buying up unusually large quantities of tear gas and other riot equipment”. The memories of how the poll tax riots fatally wounded the Thatcher government remain vivid in the memories of politicians. Meanwhile, the anti-immigrant BNP is, for the first time, set to gain a number of MEPs. This will spell the end of moderate British Euroscepticism, but that does not mean that Euroscepticism will disappear. On the contrary, it will acquire a harder edge, carried along by parallel agendas the establishment will not like. Britain is therefore an unlikely source of burden sharing.

Ireland’s economy has virtually collapsed. We have recently witnessed the largest demonstration ever to be held in the nation’s capital. David McWilliams, a former official at the Irish central bank stated: “This is war; countries have to defend themselves,” – he has broken the ultimate taboo by hinting at threats to precipitate an EMU crisis, which would risk a chain reaction across the eurozone’s southern belt. The comments reflect growing bitterness in Dublin over the way the country has been treated after voting against the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. Ireland is another unlikely source of burden sharing.

Spain lost almost 200,000 jobs in January in the worst one-month rise since records began, raising the unemployment rate to 14.4 per cent. “This is a national emergency. The government is being overwhelmed by events,” said Mariano Rajoy, the Opposition leader. The mood has changed dramatically in recent weeks as debtors launch hunger strikes and one builder threatened to set himself on fire to protest the credit crunch. Maravillas Rojo, the labour secretary, said four million people might be out of work by the end of the year. Over one million Spanish men under 30 are unemployed. Finance minister Pedro Solbes says there is almost nothing Madrid can do to halt the downward spiral. “We have exhausted our margin for manoeuvre,” he said. Inundated as it is with illegal immigrants, Spain too is therefore out of the burden-sharing menu.

Greece and Portugal are in no better shape; indeed tensions in the former have exploded into running street battles in Athens.

Holland a country once famed for its extensive liberal policies has admitted that ‘multiculturalism’ was a monumental failure. Invariably, polls have indicated that immigration in general and Islam in particular are the nation’s greatest threats. Every year the calls grow louder and more urgent to pass ever-tougher laws on illegal immigration. The most recent polls indicate that if an election were held today, Geert Wilder’s anti immigrant party would be the king maker.

The Belgians cannot even live with each other, split as they are on ethnic lines where even electing a government has proved to be an impossibility. France, always second to none where it comes to protectionism has a Prime Minister that won a landslide victory on the back of a promise to tackle illegal immigration. Our nearest neighbour Italy, reeling under the sheer volume of illegal immigration, has declared a state of emergency. The army was brought in to combat turf wars between local crime syndicates and those organised by illegal immigrants. Laws have been proposed that would give legal recognition to vigilante groups. Romanians have been expelled en masse and so on and so forth – it is hard to envisage any form of burden sharing from there too.

Sweden is overrun. According to some estimates, the rapidly growing Muslim immigrant population may turn Malmö, the nation’s third largest city into a Muslim majority city within a few years. It will be the first major Scandinavian city to enjoy this honour, although perhaps not the last. Sweden, only a few decades ago an extremely homogeneous society, has had more immigration over the past years than almost any other Western nation. Two out of three new Swedes are actually immigrants. Suffice it to say that Jens Orback, Minister for Democracy, Metropolitan Affairs, Integration and Gender Equality from the Social Democratic Party, said during a debate on Swedish radio in 2004, “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.” The Swedes may therefore seek to accelerate that process by relieving us of illegal immigrants, but one doubts that they will.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has already told our Prime Minister that “Denmark would not offer to provide refuge to illegal immigrants now in Malta”. One can hardly imagine Austria, Luxembourg and Slovenia doing so either. Cyprus finds itself in the same troubled waters we are in.

The new European Justice Commissioner, Jacques Barrot, was somewhat more evasive but no less discouraging when it was reported that he “seems to prefer strengthening solidarity mechanisms than have a new burden sharing system to solve Malta’s illegal problems. He also indicated he is not very favourable to Malta’s specific burden sharing proposal”.

Germany increasingly seen as Europe’s cash cow, is itself struggling with immigration. A study presented by the Berlin Institute for Population and Development has revealed an alarming lack of integration especially by the Turkish immigrants, which make up three million of the German population. A separate study by the Bertelsmann Foundation estimates that failed immigration is already costing the country up to €16 billion per year. It is therefore likewise doubtful whether Germany will extend its hand and reach out for more.

Notable economists and even financial institutions such as HSBC (European Meltdown?) have already warned that Europe’s common currency is working so badly that some countries may actually benefit from ditching the euro, most of all Germany. Various wide ranging news and analysis increasingly state that the risks of break-up had now reached a point where it had become necessary to “think more carefully about the costs and benefits of exiting”.

This is the reality of the Europe we live in, the Europe that we expect to relieve us of our own problems. It won’t because it cannot.

History has amply demonstrated that we ignore reality and human nature at our peril. The past is full of evidence for anyone but the blind – from the Balkan wars to the collapse across ethnic lines in the former Soviet Union or indeed any former empire – that trouble brews either because of cultural, demographic or economic pressures.

In modern day Europe, these ingredients are all combining to make an explosive cocktail and the fuse is already dangerously close to the powder keg.

Human nature is like a spring coil; you can suppress it, but ultimately it has its limits and when it recoils it inevitably does so to its full extent. That is what our multicultural do-gooders and self-appointed elite have failed so miserably to comprehend. By advancing the tyranny of political correctness they have suppressed legitimate dissent underfoot. By trying to plan societies in advance and rejecting the reality of human nature in their quest for an egalitarian utopia and global governance, they have themselves laid down the seeds for a harvest of wrath.

Malta has thus far been spared this inevitability but it is not too far behind. This is why Azzjoni Nazzjonali insists that Malta must help itself now, while it can determine its own fate and avoid the ugly scenes we will surely witness elsewhere, and much sooner than most people think.

Those who continue to peddle the promise of eventual EU help are therefore either lying through their teeth or are completely detached from reality, with little or no grasp of history.

EU help in the form of burden sharing will not be forthcoming – not in the coming months, and not in the next few years because EU States will be too busy fighting the fires in their own countries to care about anyone else, especially a little rock in the middle of the Mediterranean which serves as a convenient buffer.

Mr Spiteri is AN’s Information Secretary and a candidate in the MEP elections.