Ivan Camilleri in Brussels
Nautilus III starts today
Nautilus III, the EU-led patrol mission against illegal migration in the Mediterranean, is set to start today, sources close to the Maltese Armed Forces told The Times yesterday. "All is now set so that this year's mission can start on Saturday (this morning) as scheduled by Frontex following an agreement reached between all the participating EU member states last week in Poland," the sources said.
This year's mission, coordinated and financed by the EU border control agency, will be the third surveillance operation to be held off the coast of Malta against illegal migration.
Nautilus III will, however, be by far the longest such mission and is scheduled to last 23 weeks, covering the entire migration season from May to October without any interruption.
This was possible following the doubling of the agency's budget for this year, through the initiative of Maltese MEP Simon Busuttil who is also the European People's Party spokesman on Frontex at the European Parliament.
Malta, Italy, France and Germany will be the main EU member states participating in this mission contributing various naval and aeronautic assets to cover the region, particularly the strait between southern Italy, Malta and Libya.
Other EU member states will be participating through the deployment of experts to assist Malta and Italy deal with illegal immigrants landing in Malta, Lampedusa and Sicily.
The start of this year's mission had to be postponed by almost a month following an initial disagreement between the main participating countries over who should take final responsibility of illegal immigrants saved in the search and rescue area (SAR) of Libya during the patrol mission. A deal was struck last week following diplomatic and technical discussions.
In line with this agreement, migrants saved in the Libyan SAR will be taken to Libya and when not possible to the closest safe haven. According to maritime rules, the closest save haven will mean either Malta or Lampedusa, depending on which island is the closest when illegal immigrants are taken on board.
The sources said that according to last year's agreement, when Libya refuses to take illegal immigrants, as will probably be the case even this year, both Germany and France had accepted to assume responsibility of the illegal immigrants saved by their assets.
Despite diplomatic efforts by the EU and its member states over the past months, Libya has again refused to participate in the Frontex-led mission.
It is a known fact that the majority of illegal immigrants crossing over to Europe from North Africa leave on boats from various Libyan ports.
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Kamal Awad
May 17th 2008, 19:18
RAT AND MOUTH – THE NEVER ENDING RACE
Again - Political and tougher security measures will never solve an economically and wrong politics based issues.
Whatever stand – pro – anti or even neutral, immigration is putting both European citizens and governments at equal panic. A couple of thousands of illegal immigrants coupled with a few millions legal immigrants could oust western governments - This is a real farce. While the media reports and peoples should decide instead, people prefer to grumble and get fumed. Honestly- I always refrain myself to put a pen on paper to comment on this thorny issue of illegal immigrants but few minutes ago a friend of mine called and we were discussing the increase in bread prices , fuel …etc..… but suddenly the conversation turned to shouting and complaining negatively about Muslims – Africans - Libya and to my surprise even Bent Laden (the sister of Osama Ben Laden) was mentioned…. ..any way within few minutes I calmed him down and we started talking about VODKA –Morena and last night Xarabank!
However this conversation raised a couple of still unanswered questions: Why should Libya be responsible to patrol the southern border of the EU? - Is immigration really a prime problem in Europe? If so, why politicians are pussyfooting and keep pushing wrong buttons?
Or is it simply a sound-good issue to be used sometimes to gain votes and in many times to deflect attention from other social problems widely increasing in the EU….?
Immigration will remain unsolved problem for yet more decades to come. As far as what I know the average birth rate in the EU is down to about 1.5 children per woman, raising fears that an ageing European population will not be able to finance pensions systems. This population’s deficit must be filled – but if again by opting to the selective immigration policy by granting a Blue- Card system to highly skilled workers from Africa this will once again brain-drain Africa.
Talking realities may not suit many grumblers ears mainly because most of the EU population either far too young to remember certain facts, tuned not to understand or prefer to hear beautiful words, but we all know that in real life, the opposite is true.
- Post war II Europe was modernized and re-built for the most part by Immigrant from east to west Europe and from Africa to Europe.
This one way immigration alone has left Africa decades backward. I would now keep my mouth shut and don’t talk about a long history of much more serious incorrectness of colonial politics.
Thanks to Ivan Camilleri and I wish him good luck in Brussels