Experiencing the facts

The facts and the figures on the immigration situation in Malta are freely available through the internet anywhere in the world. For such information there is no need for anyone to travel to Malta.

Regardless of this obvious fact, the request by Alternattiva Demokratika, the Green party, to the European Green Party was easily accepted. The bare facts on paper are not quite the same as direct experience.

Ulrike Lunacek, one of the two co-spokesmen leading the European Green Party, made the trip in order to give life to the statistics, to stand eyeball to eyeball to the people producing them, to listen to their speech and, above all, to meet both Maltese citizens and migrants who have been thrown together to their mutual dismay.

Standing among the migrants at the Safi detention centre questioning and being questioned in return is a formative experience for any politician. The migrants do not ask questions for effect. They want to know what politicians can do because they are themselves in a fix. Nothing is theory. It is all very hard reality.

Their principal concern is always freedom. The efforts they have made and the risks they have taken are not only to make economic gains. There is shock and even bitterness that the first experience they make of the European Union they have heard so much about is months of detention and enforced idleness adding immensely to their stress and uncertainty. Rescued at sea and brought to an island many of them had never heard of, they are appalled that they are imprisoned for terms usually assigned to serious crimes.

Rushing from one appointment to the next in the heat and the traffic, the fact of Malta' diminutive size and its population density are inevitably brought home to any visitor. Ms Lunacek had been here twice before. She needed no convincing that the number of immigrants washing up on Malta's shores cannot be handled by this tiny country in the long term. She probably knows that she has her hands full communicating the disproportion to people who have not visited the country.

Fortunately, many of the Greens she will be speaking to have been to Malta. A European Green Party council was held here some years ago attended by delegates from over 30 member parties, and Green MEPs . In the Vienna EGP council, the immigration situation in Malta will be brought to their attention through a report on Ulrike's fact-finding mission.

Already, Green MEPs have raised the issue in debates in the European Parliament and they will continue to be requested to keep piling on the pressure for action to be taken. A close scrutiny of the remit of Frontex and its ability to provide practical assistance will be maintained.

There will also be concerted advocacy for a holistic approach; dealing with the emergency and its effects is laudable and necessary but it must also be done with a view to the long term. The EU cannot at once invest money in development cooperation while conducting a trade policy that impacts the domestic markets of African countries, indirectly provoking further migration.

While the EGP frames its own policy on migration, taking into account the experience in hotspots such as Malta, it is also responsible for marshalling all available resources to find solutions to existing challenges. Greens are in government in five EU countries, also when it is not a Green who holds the portfolio responsible for migration policy, Green ministers sit in Cabinet with colleagues from other parties and can be expected to make Malta's case, having the benefit of the facts and experience made by Ms Lunacek.

Nobody can deny that Greens have had a disproportionate influence in the framing of EU environmental policy and law. We have not only put the environment firmly on the political agenda but we have kept it there for years finally persuading friends and adversaries to take on the discourse making it their own. It has been a great victory.

However, it is not often noted that Greens can and very often do act outside the environmental stereotype. Whether in national governments or in the European Parliament itself, Greens are fully-fledged MPs and MEPs taking decisions on every issue brought before their parliaments. On issues not directly connected to the environment, Greens are equally competent and influential. Once they have set their policy, they can bring pressure to bear and use their leverage to tilt the decision in the desired direction.

Ms Lunacek's visit may not make an iota of difference to the people in the open centres and in the detention centres. It can make a significant difference to Maltese citizens and to migrants if it leads to the removal of Malta's obligation to be permanently responsible for the migrants granted protection in Malta in terms of the Dublin Convention. Chances are that if this happens, all migrants will immediately leave Malta.

Proposing a joint migration policy for the EU, the Greens can seek consensus across the divides of political family. It goes hand in hand with the Green proposal for the establishment of an EU foreign service which will be of the greatest value, especially to the smaller member states that cannot afford diplomatic representation around the globe. Malta has immense difficulty in processing refugee applications and also repatriating those migrants whose application for protection is rejected simply because it is not in diplomatic relations with the proposed recipient countries. That could change before too long if Greens have their way.

Greens can also be expected to defend European core values such as human rights not only to secure respect for migrants as humans but also to ensure that crises such as immigration or terrorism do not erode the values of the union. It would be far worse for the EU to lose sight of its own guiding principles than to take on the new immigration which it needs to proceed on its own path.

The political lunatic fringe may propose to detain migrants for not more than a month expelling them all afterwards. We all should know that this is the purest nonsense and that it is simply not possible. Greens can be relied upon to seek practical, workable solutions solidly based on the principles of justice and respect for the rule of law. If we have succeed in addressing an emergency everybody else refused to recognise for years, the environment, why should we have any trouble finding consensus in a situation everybody else views with something bordering on panic?

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - the Green party.

www.alternattiva.org.mt, www.adgozo.com