We were rightly upset, this past week, at the tone and the words used about us by Matteo Salvini, Italian deputy prime minister and leader of the League in the Italian ruling coalition.
Choosing tones and words used before him by Roberto Maroni, another Lega Nord leader and twice minister for the interior, Salvini, in the very first day as minister of the interior, peremptorily demanded that Malta take a shipload of 629 migrants saved from boats just off Libya.
The same arguments were trotted out by Italian politicians and media – one minister even threatened to remove Malta from its huge SAR which extends from Tunisia to Crete; an Italian television station showed Malta almost as a clone of Monte Carlo with big yachts and an affluent, white, population.
Malta stood its ground and refused entry to the migrant ship. Italy closed its ports too despite the many ports that declared they were ready to take in the ship. Spain stepped in and offered to take in the ship but then it was discovered that the ship had taken on board more people than it could hold and that the four-day crossing to Valencia was too much for it. Italian navy ships were called in to help transport some of the migrants.
Despite this, Salvini claimed this was a victory for the new government.
We know this type, having experienced it in all its forms in the Mintoff years – the confrontational, in-your-face approach. Salvini adds a virulent xenophobic approach.
However, the victory soon evaporated and the real problems emerged. Not just the logistics problem but also the realization that one ship does not exhaust the interminable number of people seeking asylum. By that time, however, France’s president Macron had insulted Italy and Italy reacted by demanding an apology. That raised the problem to a higher European, level. Salvini, wisely, turned to other topics. Malta was forgotten. In fact, Salvini himself said on Tuesday that he was going to talk to the Maltese authorities who, he said, had been irresponsible all along but we never heard, from the Maltese or the Italian side, that the phone call had been made.
Suddenly, as sudden as it had risen, as sudden as the violent storm that broke out in the Central Mediterranean, the migrant problem was off the front pages, except for reports from on board the ship which were mainly about migrants vomiting and being the worse for wear.
What emerged instead were the immense efforts the new government had to make to persuade its international counterparts that its pre-election campaign rhetoric was not the real thing. The new minister for finance, Tria explained in an interview that Italy did not intend to leave the euro and that it intended to keep its finances under control.
The new prime minster, Conte, first tried, timidly, to talk about a better rapprochement with Russia at the G7 meeting in Canada, but was persuaded to give up. On Friday, Conte was the guest of French president Macron in Paris – not a word of apology was heard and all was sweetness and light.
There are still problems ahead but the direst predictions have been proved false so far. As I see it, the ‘solutions to the migrant problem’ that were aired by both Macron and Conte at their press conference will not work, just as the solutions proposed before did not work either.
The people of war-afflicted countries, the people from poverty-stricken countries and minorities of all sorts see Europe as the land of hope and will not desist from trying to get to Europe available. Europe on the other hand is increasingly making it clear it does not want more migrants. But Europe is soft and weak and not very good at coordinating action.
Where does Malta figure in all this? Where does Italy? Nowhere in both cases. Their geographic position is what it is and there will always be drug- and people-traffickers who benefit hugely from the situation. The European institutions such as Frontex have not worked. Italy must understand that Malta’s much-derided regime of keeping newly arrived migrants in a closed centre for a rather long time gives it an opportunity to sift and examine each migrant and see if he/she should be allowed in.
This will surely not assuage the expectations raised during the election campaign but that is Italy’s and the new government’s new burden.
With regard to Malta, at least this new crisis did not find us on opposite sides. Even we, however, have lessons to learn and more discipline and enforcement to bring in. We are already far too lax in letting hundreds of people who should not be here at all remain on the island.
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