Malta tells EU member states to share immigration burden

Immigrants picked up by boats outside member states’ search-and-rescue zones should be shared among all EU member states, according to a Maltese proposal to be put before justice ministers next week (12 June).

Tonio Borg, Malta’s justice and home affairs minister, will present the proposal amid criticism by other EU states of his government’s refusal to accept immigrants stranded at sea. In an interview with European Voice, he hit back, saying: "Everyone expects Malta to become the dumping ground now of immigrants saved outside its own zone."

The proposal would involve burden-sharing among the 27 member states on a rotating basis and proportionally according to member states’ population size. Malta is hoping that the proposal will defuse the row and allow vessels to pick up immigrants at sea without provoking diplomatic disputes each time.

"This is not a Maltese, Spanish or Italian problem. This is what we’ve been trying to say all along for these last three years," said Borg.

Franco Frattini, the European commissioner for justice, freedom and security, said yesterday (6 June) that he backed the idea, with Malta also expecting support from Spain and Italy. But other EU states, including Germany, are likely to be reluctant. Germany has in the past opposed plans to transfer immigrants between member states, since it already has to deal with large numbers of immigrants which arrive from its eastern land borders.

Borg took issue with Spanish ministers who have criticised Malta over an incident last month in which it refused to accept 27 immigrants picked up by a Spanish trawler.

"This incident of a Spanish trawler picking up immigrants from the Libyan search-and-rescue zone is clearly outside Malta’s search-and-rescue zone," he said.

"Usually if a European Union state is in conflict with another non-EU member we defend the EU member state, like in the Russian monument incident, but in this case no one is mentioning Libya," added Borg.

He said that Libya had refused to accept responsibility for the immigrants and that Malta should not be expected to step in.

"Under which criteria of international law was Malta expected to accept these immigrants saved outside the enormous Maltese search-and-rescue region, which covers an area of 250,000 sq km? Why not Poland, Italy, Greece or Spain, why Malta?" he said.

Member states’ experts, Commission experts and representatives from the United Nations’ refugee agency will attend a meeting in Brussels tomorrow (8 June) to try to find ways of resolving disputes over the responsibility for accepting immigrants stranded at sea. The Commission has said that the EU has no competence to propose legislation in this field as the UN rules apply, but that it could suggest ways of filling in the "gaps".

"After what happened, after the tragedy happened with people dying in the sea, the time has come to have a real political common understanding on how to patrol those areas and who is responsible for what," said Frattini.

Frattini will also appeal to ministers next week to send the boats and planes that they have pledged to Frontex, the EU’s border agency, which is currently leading patrols off Spain’s Canary Islands and which is due to begin patrols in the Mediterranean.

He complained that only around one-tenth of the 115 boats, 25 helicopters and 23 planes promised had been made available. "Member states promised, in writing. They wrote letters signed by ministers to me and to Frontex. Now we need [them] on the sea, in the air."

Borg said that just four member states, Malta, Spain, France and Germany, had agreed to join the Mediterranean patrol operation.

"We feel that this is a feeble response to such a turbulent area in the Mediterranean. This is the area where most people are dying on their way to Europe…my conservative estimate is that about 600 are dying each summer trying to cross over to Europe," he said.

Immigrants picked up by boats outside member states’ search-and-rescue zones should be shared among all EU member states, according to a Maltese proposal to be put before justice ministers next week (12 June).