“Existing European solutions are no longer fit and definitely cannot sustain the current crisis and the challenges that we are facing as a Union,” said MEP Agius Saliba in the European Parliament in Strasbourg during a debate on the search and rescue in the Mediterranean.
In his address to the European Council and the European Commission, the labour MEP said that necessary actions must be taken sooner rather than later, in everyone’s interest. “The European Union needs to wake up now and effectively address this problem through solidarity and a common European solution.”
MEP Agius Saliba said: “The situation is no longer viable. On the one hand, we have migrants stranded at high seas for days and people, including children and women, dying in the Mediterranean daily. And on the other, we have European citizens feeling frustrated and equally concerned with the Union’s inaction.”
The MEP also stressed that countries at the frontiers are directly affected by migration, and they are far more vulnerable to incidents such as the one that happened during the weekend in the Ħal Far open centra in Malta.
“Things escalate by the hour, and we can no longer ignore the fact that migration is one of the biggest concerns for our citizens. Otherwise, we risk the rise of extremist ideologies and the further spreading of hate and violence,” said MEP Alex Agius Saliba.
The MEP also said that the problem should not put down to whether we save people’s lives or leave them to drown at sea. Saving people’s lives is a humanitarian and moral imperative, which cannot be ignored. “What we need is to address the lack of viable European solution and revise the Common European asylumpackage,because the ineffectiveness of the Dublin Regulation is undoubtedly the main cause of this situation,” concluded the MEP.