With the storms of autumn descending upon us, summer is well and truly over, and with it the human migration season ends as well. As everyone in this neck of the woods is well aware, seas are far too rough for all but the most adventurous asylum seeker.
As desperate as most of these people are to find safe refuge in Malta, all of whom risk life and limb to make the Mediterranean crossing in rickety boats, few would resign themselves to an almost certain fate at this perilous time of year.
And that is exactly why the government chose last Saturday to, once and for all, allow the Sea Watch 3 humanitarian rescue vessel to finally leave port, where it has been blocked for almost four months during the height of the migration crisis.
The NGO running the ship claims untold hundreds of lives have been lost, lives that the NGO says it could have saved had it not been blocked by the government in port. The numbers are debatable and the fact of the matter is that any life lost is a life too many.
The decision to block Maltese ports came in late June after both Italy and Malta refused to allow the MV Lifeline, an NGO-owned vessel, to dock and take responsibility for the migrants on board after the vessel ignored orders to return the migrants to Libya.
The case has caused irreparable harm to Malta’s humanitarian reputation abroad, as well and pride and shame for many Maltese.
But this is not wholly a situation of Malta’s own making, with the European Union having failed to muster its humanitarian mettle this summer to come up with a bloc-wide solution to migration phenomenon, this has been a summer of management by crisis, and ad hoc solutions to migrant arrivals.
Malta has been at the forefront this summer of attempts to strike some sort of European Union solidarity through its piecemeal, ad hoc arrangements between the few willing EU countries willing to pitch in - of which, sadly, there has only been a handful.
Malta deserves commendation for its diplomatic efforts, and for having tempered its obstinacy to see it make, as the government put it earlier this summer, a ‘concession allowing the vessel to enter its ports, despite having no legal obligation to do so’.
It is understandable that Malta is somewhat reticent about opening up the proverbial floodgates, the move, however, is fast earning Malta a somewhat sinister reputation amongst those with a more humanitarian streak. But where diplomacy may not have been employed to its full with such strong arm tactics, the diplomacy negotiated by the Muscat government to effect burden sharing when no such empathy existed before must have been no mean feat.
But the only problem here is that these are far from ad hoc situations – they are a permanent, recurring situations that need to be addressed with permanent ‘responsibility-sharing’ measures on an EU-wide level because it must be understood that the migrants we are speaking of are not headed for Malta, Italy or Spain in particular – they are headed for the wider European Union where they believe they will be given refuge.
Given the encouraging yet far from satisfactory willingness to help from the majority of EU members states, there is clearly still a lot of convincing to do if we are to convert that these ad hoc agreements struck by Prime Minister Muscat are to be converted into the kind of permanent burden-sharing structure that Europe so desperately needs.
That solution must at all costs at least include a functioning, Europe-wide asylum system with proper support for frontline states such as Malta, and the creation of shared responsibilities.
Anything short of that and the Aquarius and Lifeline sagas are only destined to repeat themselves over and over again next summer and for many summers to come, which could be spent bickering about who is to take care of the world’s most destitute, downtrodden and needy seeking safe havens.