I was abroad in Croatia for the past two weeks. I strongly suggest that those who want to do business with this new EU country should do so immediately before others discover it. It has boundless resources, a well educated and technically inclined population with an Austrian culture but with a Slavic background, and a very long Mediterranean coastline with an established tourism sector particularly on the beautiful Dalmatian coast. They respect and manage their environment extremely well and they have quite a proficient manufacturing base and industry.

My wife and I rented a log cabin on a small mountain village resort very close to the Plitvice Lakes area. There was forest, lakes and rivers everywhere even passing right under the log cabin! You got trout straight out of the river onto your plate and for those who do not like fish there was the escalope in any form of meat/chicken/turkey, one could like. Swimming was allowed in certain areas and the water was relatively warm. The wine is excellent and the beer very good. It was impeccably kept, relatively cheap and well serviced. The small village even turned out in full force to dedicate a new church to Our Lady of Mount Carmel on the Sunday after her feast day (16th July) to replace the one destroyed during the relatively recent Serbo-Croatian war after the dissolution of ex-Yugoslavia. They (Serbs and Croats) still do not like each other very much but if there is one thing that EU membership should teach them (Serbia too has applied to join the EU) it is to eventually put away national rivalries of the destructive and divisive kind and learn to live and work with one another just as it did in post second world war Europe.

This brings me to the issue of misplaced nationalism. I believe that nationalism of the wrong kind, the one that thrives on xenophobia, intolerance to religious differences and hatred of different cultures, has been and will remain the reason why many wars, disagreements and lack of regard for human rights break out in many places of the world including even here in Europe. Thanks to the advances of new communication technologies, I was able to follow the debate on the issue of the illegal immigrants here in Malta while I was abroad. Things seem to take on a different perspective from afar. Problems look distant but are sometimes more comprehensible in their entirety than when one is looking at an issue up close. Several years ago, I wrote an article on this issue and I still believe that the solution I had put forward then still holds water even though it might not have very popular ratings. The EU needs a well managed formal immigration policy as exists in other countries such as the USA, Canada and Australia. Immigrants of the illegal kind inundate all fronts of the EU. We in the northern Mediterranean have the immigrants from Africa, but other parts of Europe have their problems too. In Dalmatian countries it is the Albanians and the Turks; in eastern and northern Europe it is the influx from the peoples of the former USSR and the Turks; in the UK it’s the influx from its former colonial countries mostly Asia; in Spain and Portugal it’s the influx from South America; in Belgium and Holland it’s the influx from the Congo and Asia respectively, and the story is too long to be finalised here. The fact remains that Europe has not integrated and managed immigration policy to co-ordinate responses that are legal and also to share the burdens. A slow controlled immigration is ultimately beneficial for all EU member states because our demographics and workforce, skills, culture, pensions and industry are strengthened by such an approach. One EU Commissioner once got quite mad at me when I suggested this approach at a public meeting in Malta a few years ago. He stated that having EU citizens working longer and keeping pensioners active in the community could still solve the demography problem. I fail to be convinced. I am no statistician but our medical course did contain a unit on statistics and I strongly believe a more comprehensive pan-European approach is called for here.

What I do know is that the problem of illegal immigration will not go away soon. Neither will it go away with the stamping of feet or fists, nor with any inhumane approach that rejects well-established international law! Neither will it disappear with street protests nor with small-minded politicians trying to earn a few quick votes from narrow-minded citizens off the back of indubitable human misery and well-intentioned refugees. It will not disappear with racist jibes and neither by sweeping the issue under the carpet. It requires men and women with big hearts and big minds from all EU countries to come together and look at the common good of their peoples and also the common good of humanity at large. It may involve more economic and financial help to third countries, it may involve better co-ordination and sharing of responsibilities, but above all it requires a detaching suppression (a form of poverty?) of all our national prides in order to get together and hammer out a reasonable pan-European immigration policy that will do the common good proud! Are there such politicians in Europe today? I have no doubt that there are and it is now high time to have the courage to stand up, to speak, act and be counted!

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