Yesterday's The Malta Independent highlighted the fact that today is the day which should decide the future of the EU's asylum office and it could well (and should well) be in Malta.
Before people get ahead of themselves and begin to offer pearls of wisdom, we echo what we said yesterday: This will not end our migration woes, but on the other hand, it will not encourage more migrants to come to Malta.
What it will do, and this is where people should sit up and take note, is put us slap bang in the middle of the problem.
Will it serve to help us? Of course it will. But what we need to bear in mind is that this is no joke – e6 million as a start-up budget, and e43.7m in running costs for three years. In 2013, this office expects to employ a total of 94 people.
One must make sure that it is clear: this is a big job. It will not simply mean processing asylum forms of immigrants here in Malta. Oh no. It will involve far more – it will involve everything under the sun related to matters of asylum.
However, as we have mentioned, Malta feels that it is well-suited to deal with the setup, implementation and running of this office and the fact that preparatory groundwork to find a site for the office has been done shows the willingness to hit the ground running.
Of course, there are others who want to host the office, namely Cyprus and Bulgaria – two other frontier states who want the responsibility (and prestige), just like Malta.
We understand that the decision will be taken today (at least verbally) during a Ministers of Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting. Malta is reported to have secured the backing of heavyweights France and Italy (no mean feat) and last week, Spain announced its support during the visit of King Juan Carlos.
What is perhaps the most significant in all this is that Malta has secured the support of nations which suffer the consequences of migration – notably Italy and Spain. Malta, no matter what anyone says, has been right on the frontline in the immigration issue. Our small size has amplified the problem tremendously and, while we acknowledge that there is still much to be done, we have begun to come to terms with the problem and deal with it effectively where possible.
When we say deal with the problem, we mean it in a wider sense – processing asylum applications, re-education, patrolling, resettlement and much more. Coupled with Malta's incessant work to secure a burden-sharing agreement, whereby other European Union states take asylum seekers from Malta, it seems to be an obvious choice.
If Malta secures this office, we should take it as having accomplished something. We have progressed from a small island everyone ignored, whose problems were seen as a ‘storm in a teacup’, to a nation that has been recognised as one which will do its best to tackle a problem, as long as it is helped in doing so, both in terms of solidarity and support and also logistics and hardware.
Much of this is to the credit of the Ministry of Justice and Home Affairs, and other ministers and politicians who have lobbied long and hard in Malta, in the international press, over working lunches, in the corridors of Brussels and anywhere they could. If Malta lands this office, their work will have finally bore real and tangible fruit.