As I followed the unrolling of the European Council in Brussels last week, I looked around me and considered not just the developments that affected Malta but also those treated on a vaster level by the European leaders.

We in Malta were all agog with regard to the stand-off between Malta and the rest of Europe as regards asylum seekers. The rest of Europe was all agog about the news that the US had been spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal mobile phone and that of other leaders.

It was as though we were living in separate worlds.

But that’s Europe for you. Contrary to the stated belief that Europe stands for principles, for unity and for solidarity, many times each country seeks its own interests and what it feels is its due from the united Europe.

This is all the more visible when it comes to budget sharing or deciding, when Europe’s leaders traditionally take seven shirts with them in expectation of a long-drawn out battle.

It is also visible when it comes to deciding on the siting of an EU agency when candidate countries trade and battle with accepted and hidden weapons.

Soon there will be a time for that, as I will explain later, and this is where Malta may, if careful, play its hand.

It is also clear that immigration, if not at the forefront of the Council’s deliberations, is very much in many European voters’ minds. Next year’s European Parliament’s election will, most probably, see the advance of the most eurosceptic, xenophobic parliament so far, considering the advance that the parties expressing this view seem to be making in public opinion. Marine Le Pen in France, the Cinque Stelle in Italy, UKIP in the UK and similar parties elsewhere are rubbing their hands with glee at the coming successes.

So when Malta, and its representative, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, put across Malta’s anxiety regarding the continuous influx of boat people, it was heard with respect and sympathy. First of all, the numbers are there, the deaths at sea too. The reaction by most Maltese at this influx, about which it seems no one can do anything, neither in Malta nor in Europe, is shared if not by the governments at the Council, by significant parts of the electorate around Europe.

Of course, and this is perhaps where Dr Muscat is mistaken, the peoples of Europe are not bothered by the dramas we see and face but by the increased penetration of Europe by all kinds of illegal immigrants.

To make it clearer, the people of Rome are not losing any sleep over Malta’s traumas but they do get hot under the collar when they look around and see more and more non-Italians coming in. The people in Brussels see the vast multi-cultural crowds on the underground and in the streets. There are parts of the Brussels and Paris banlieux that seem more like North Africa and parts of Rome are fully Somali.

The difference between those people and us is that while they are more or less resigned to the situation, here we still believe we can do something about it. Or that, if we can do nothing, the EU can do something about it. If now the last bastion, the EU as described by Dr Muscat, fails to protect us, we may either succumb to resignation or we may try and do something dramatic.

In Parliament on Tuesday, much was made about the conclusions of the Brussels summit and the fact that not even a specific mention of Malta was made. More will have been made by people in their minds and in their homes that to claim victory just because a future summit in December will take what were called ‘operational decisions’ when everyone knows the EU’s penchant for procrastination and pushing the can downstream, is rather far-fetched. To claim a victory of sorts just because a single paragraph in the draft conclusion was widened to four or five is again applying the sort of soothing balm the PN government used to do.

Dr Muscat and the Maltese Representative in Brussels worked well to get a core group of countries behind Malta’s stand and to keep hammering the issue at the Council. But, as far as I know, neither Italian Prime Minister Letta nor the Greek Prime Minister came up with the sort of rhetoric that Dr Muscat told us he used in the Council. Nor did the other countries. Parliament President Martin Schultz may have used stronger words but the European leaders have got used to his harangues at every council.

From the points he mentioned in Brussels last week and from what he said in Parliament on Tuesday, Dr Muscat seems to have been quite technical and operational at a level that EU heads of government rarely get to. On the one hand, this exhibits a mastery of the minutiae of the issue but at any such meeting, such details switch off attention.

Then, too, the illegal immigration issue as perceived and lived by most peoples in Europe is a very different perception to that of the Maltese. A person in Berlin would be concerned because his street has been taken over by Turks, a person in Birmingham would be perturbed by Sikhs and Pakis all around him. These people have not just made it to Berlin, to Birmingham, they have established their residence there, they have brought over their families, they have set up communities with their own places of worship, community centres and the like. They have been accepted as residents, workers and citizens. On the contrary, the boat people that come to Malta do their best to get to somewhere else as fast as they can.

It is true that there are increasing numbers, from what I can see, who have emerged from the closed and open centres and found a residence somewhere else. Many have jobs, though they get paid less. Their children go to Maltese schools, and they get the national health service. But so far I can detect no move to their becoming residents and citizens of Malta. (That is ironically what the government is offering to ‘high worth people’ but that’s a different issue).

I predict that the December council will not deliver what it woolly committed itself to in the conclusions of the October summit. The European Parliament election is too near for any structural and serious decision to be made. Malta will find itself, unless something happens or the government manages to keep the issue burning, sidelined and forgotten.

Dr Muscat’s rhetoric, if I understand correctly, at the October summit echoed very much the kind of arguments that are being made by the eurosceptic parties all over Europe, but it is precisely this rhetoric that the EU leaders are battling against in their own countries, so one presumes they will not readily subscribe to such reasoning. Rather, they are viscerally afraid and antagonistic to such reasoning. They are afraid of such reasoning.

If this happens, Malta will find itself at loggerheads with the rest of the EU. I dare say Dr Muscat will not settle for any placatory message in the December council final conclusion, not even if instead of four paragraphs it will have 10.

What then? Dr Muscat has led the country to believe he will make Europe wake up and smell the coffee. When that does not happen, the range of options he has is rather narrow.

I can only offer what may help, though I do not have any idea whether it will be enough.

The EU is soon to enter a period of horse-trading – the appointment of the new President of the Commission, the new Foreign Representative and the new President of the Council. In these delicate choices each country has a certain weight in the decision and past experience shows that other countries trade like mad to get what they really want.

Dr Muscat has publicly nailed his vote to support Martin Schultz, both out of Socialist sympathy and also because of the way Mr Schultz has spoken of the Malta predicament. But at least, the two other posts are open and other countries with candidates in mind will be very eager to horse trade.

This is where I strongly appeal to Dr Muscat to play his cards well and not to allow emotions to play havoc with the country’s real politik. The issue, of the boat people, is a real one and has a huge impact on the Maltese people, but tackling the rest of Europe calls for less rhetoric and more brazen whatnots.

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