The meeting of the European Union’s justice and home affairs ministers being held across tomorrow and Tuesday has much hinged upon it, and not only for Malta.

With southern Europe facing a potential exodus of biblical proportions, as the threat has been described, from the Libyan civil war, yet another failure to reach an agreement on solidarity demands tabled by Malta will not only be bad news for us, but for the whole of the bloc.

After all, if the EU is not able to prepare, the operative word here being ‘prepare’, to share what could turn out to be an unprecedented burden, what hope is there for other forms of European burden sharing and solidarity, which are among the bloc’s defining concepts?

The EU, for all intents and purposes, is heavily fragmented in an area where there is simply no room for any such divides – in humanitarian principles.

Even Malta and Italy, the two states facing the brunt of what could be a human tidal wave, are bitterly divided following this week’s utterly regrettable squabble over the lives of people fleeing war-torn Libya.

Yes, Italy and Malta need to work together, but the discord between the two frontier states leaves a lot to be desired, particularly this year as far as Italy is concerned, if its disgraceful handling of Thursday’s migrant rescue is anything to go by.

The current situation is without recent precedent in Malta’s stretch of the central Mediterranean. Scores and scores of what are effectively civil war refugees lost their lives this week when a migrant boat capsized en route to Lampedusa. Another 171 could very well had lost their lives as well had it not been for the sterling, if not heroic, efforts of the Armed Forces of Malta on Thursday.

Of course ramshackle migrant boats are nothing new to Malta, nor, unfortunately, is the loss of life we saw this week. Asylum seekers had arrived in their thousands in the years before the Libyan regime ‘closed’ its coast through the controversial push-back agreement with Italy and when they did make it to Malta in those days, they did so in a steady stream of small boats very seldom carrying more than 30 passengers.

Now we are seeing far larger boats with several dozen, if not hundreds, crammed aboard – and the stream threatens to become equally steady should violence in Libya escalate or should both factions enter into a long drawn out standoff between Benghazi and Tripoli.

The week before last three boats brought in over 800 sub-Saharan Africans fleeing Libya, before sea conditions south of Malta worsened and made the risky crossing more even perilous than usual.

Once sea conditions become more conducive to safe crossings, there is no telling the number of displaced people that will seek to flee Libyan shores for the safety of Europe – with Malta placed directly on the bee-line.

As the writing on the wall becomes clearer by the day to the effect that Malta is facing a very serious danger, the small country is seeking a proactive response from its partner EU countries, which, however, seem to prefer adopting a reactive approach to the threat. Don’t come asking for help until it is well and truly needed…and we will consider your request then, is the general message Malta is being given.

In the meantime, the situation is very simple for Malta – it will certainly not let people drown, nor will it allow itself to be drowned in the tidal wave of displaced persons on the horizon.

Short of voluntary solidarity, requests for which have landed on mostly deaf ears at EU level now as they have in the past, the Maltese government is seeking to invoke other established EU mechanisms that provide for mandatory burden sharing. And here Malta’s home affairs minister will have his work cut out for him when he brings Malta’s case to the Council of Ministers level tomorrow.

Malta, understandably, will argue that it simply does not have the means, or space, to deal with the potentially enormous influx of Africans and Libyans fleeing the embattled country. That much should be abundantly obvious.

But despite this well known fact and despite having been presented with rather alarming worst case scenarios by both Frontex and Europol, Malta’s original request was met by brick walls and the vast majority of member states that replied to the request had done so in the negative.

The request was threefold: establish a joint processing centre in a suitable member state where all those entering the EU after fleeing Libya would be processed and accommodated proportionately across the bloc; a joint Frontex mission comprised of assets from a number of countries and not just those of Malta; and that the disputed new Frontex guidelines – which would effectively see all people rescued at sea being transferred to Malta instead of the nearest safe port – be ruled out of the operation.

The requests appear reasonable enough, but when Frontex asked other member states for their opinion, the answer was a resounding ‘no’.

Malta, and hopefully Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, will be bringing the arguments to the home affairs table next week. And others too, such Malta’s proposed the activation of a directive drawn up after the Balkan war to deal directly a mass movement of displaced people, as well as the possibility of an EU military mission to Libya to help evacuees escape and be relocated across the EU.

And while Malta’s fellow EU states had refused on the whole to share Malta’s burden in past years over political sensitivities at home, this latest refusal doesn’t add up considering the amount of public attention and opinion the Libyan dilemma has had across Europe.

Malta well and truly has its back is to the wall at the moment and it is taking the impending threat very seriously. It is now time for its fellow EU member states to start taking it seriously too.The meeting of the European Union’s justice and home affairs ministers being held across tomorrow and Tuesday has much hinged upon it, and not only for Malta.

With southern Europe facing a potential exodus of biblical proportions, as the threat has been described, from the Libyan civil war, yet another failure to reach an agreement on solidarity demands tabled by Malta will not only be bad news for us, but for the whole of the bloc.

After all, if the EU is not able to prepare, the operative word here being ‘prepare’, to share what could turn out to be an unprecedented burden, what hope is there for other forms of European burden sharing and solidarity, which are among the bloc’s defining concepts?

The EU, for all intents and purposes, is heavily fragmented in an area where there is simply no room for any such divides – in humanitarian principles.

Even Malta and Italy, the two states facing the brunt of what could be a human tidal wave, are bitterly divided following this week’s utterly regrettable squabble over the lives of people fleeing war-torn Libya.

Yes, Italy and Malta need to work together, but the discord between the two frontier states leaves a lot to be desired, particularly this year as far as Italy is concerned, if its disgraceful handling of Thursday’s migrant rescue is anything to go by.

The current situation is without recent precedent in Malta’s stretch of the central Mediterranean. Scores and scores of what are effectively civil war refugees lost their lives this week when a migrant boat capsized en route to Lampedusa. Another 171 could very well had lost their lives as well had it not been for the sterling, if not heroic, efforts of the Armed Forces of Malta on Thursday.

Of course ramshackle migrant boats are nothing new to Malta, nor, unfortunately, is the loss of life we saw this week. Asylum seekers had arrived in their thousands in the years before the Libyan regime ‘closed’ its coast through the controversial push-back agreement with Italy and when they did make it to Malta in those days, they did so in a steady stream of small boats very seldom carrying more than 30 passengers.

Now we are seeing far larger boats with several dozen, if not hundreds, crammed aboard – and the stream threatens to become equally steady should violence in Libya escalate or should both factions enter into a long drawn out standoff between Benghazi and Tripoli.

The week before last three boats brought in over 800 sub-Saharan Africans fleeing Libya, before sea conditions south of Malta worsened and made the risky crossing more even perilous than usual.

Once sea conditions become more conducive to safe crossings, there is no telling the number of displaced people that will seek to flee Libyan shores for the safety of Europe – with Malta placed directly on the bee-line.

As the writing on the wall becomes clearer by the day to the effect that Malta is facing a very serious danger, the small country is seeking a proactive response from its partner EU countries, which, however, seem to prefer adopting a reactive approach to the threat. Don’t come asking for help until it is well and truly needed…and we will consider your request then, is the general message Malta is being given.

In the meantime, the situation is very simple for Malta – it will certainly not let people drown, nor will it allow itself to be drowned in the tidal wave of displaced persons on the horizon.

Short of voluntary solidarity, requests for which have landed on mostly deaf ears at EU level now as they have in the past, the Maltese government is seeking to invoke other established EU mechanisms that provide for mandatory burden sharing. And here Malta’s home affairs minister will have his work cut out for him when he brings Malta’s case to the Council of Ministers level tomorrow.

Malta, understandably, will argue that it simply does not have the means, or space, to deal with the potentially enormous influx of Africans and Libyans fleeing the embattled country. That much should be abundantly obvious.

But despite this well known fact and despite having been presented with rather alarming worst case scenarios by both Frontex and Europol, Malta’s original request was met by brick walls and the vast majority of member states that replied to the request had done so in the negative.

The request was threefold: establish a joint processing centre in a suitable member state where all those entering the EU after fleeing Libya would be processed and accommodated proportionately across the bloc; a joint Frontex mission comprised of assets from a number of countries and not just those of Malta; and that the disputed new Frontex guidelines – which would effectively see all people rescued at sea being transferred to Malta instead of the nearest safe port – be ruled out of the operation.

The requests appear reasonable enough, but when Frontex asked other member states for their opinion, the answer was a resounding ‘no’.

Malta, and hopefully Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, will be bringing the arguments to the home affairs table next week. And others too, such Malta’s proposed the activation of a directive drawn up after the Balkan war to deal directly a mass movement of displaced people, as well as the possibility of an EU military mission to Libya to help evacuees escape and be relocated across the EU.

And while Malta’s fellow EU states had refused on the whole to share Malta’s burden in past years over political sensitivities at home, this latest refusal doesn’t add up considering the amount of public attention and opinion the Libyan dilemma has had across Europe.

Malta well and truly has its back is to the wall at the moment and it is taking the impending threat very seriously. It is now time for its fellow EU member states to start taking it seriously too.