It is the middle of winter and far from the migration season, and as such the great migration polemic appears to be in a sort of state of hibernation. Despite that, work is ongoing behind the scenes.

As reported in today’s issue, Germany is the latest EU country to sign on to the bloc’s voluntary pilot burden sharing project for Malta. It is to take in and resettle 100 of Malta’s resident refugees.

With Germany’s participation, the number of EU states signing on to the voluntary mechanism has grown to seven – France, Luxemburg, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, the UK and now Germany. But the addition of heavyweight Germany, in addition to the support of France and the UK – bodes well for the prospects of more countries putting the figurative pen to paper in the near future.

But with the exception of those seven countries, lobbying by the European Commission and Malta has fallen on deaf ears in the vast majority of the rest of the EU. The pilot burden sharing project, through which Malta expects to resettle some 2,000 of its resident migrants with legal status, is off to an uninspiring start but the momentum could very well pick up with the considerable weight of the UK, France and now Germany behind it.