Frontex - deterring human trafficking

The recent statement by Frontex chief Illika Laitinen to the effect that Frontex operations have failed in the central Mediterranean and that these operations are indeed a pull factor for other immigrants to try crossing over from Africa to Europe has thrown doubt on the feasibility and viability of future Frontex operations. Giving way to such misgivings would be a grave error.

Frontex operations have limited effect not because the operations in themselves are flawed but because there exists no agreement with Libya regarding re-admission of immigrants. Frontex patrols have till now centered mainly around saving lives - a laudable motive not to be forgotten in any way and conveniently and callously ignored by armchair critics who think that immigrants can be stopped from reaching our shores by merely putting in place a Frontex operation. When in 2005 the government insisted that Frontex organise patrols in the central Mediterranean, it knew that this would not be the panacea of the local immigration problem.

But it wisely insisted on these patrols for this was the best way one could involve EU countries in participating in the monitoring of Europe`s southern borders.

Secondly, not participating would have sent the wrong message to traffickers, namely that the central Mediterranean is, for human smuggling purposes, a free for all zone.

Thirdly, through Frontex we get 85 per cent EU funding for maritime patrols, which we would have done just the same.

Finally, these patrols, even if with limited effect owing to the lack of agreement with Libya, can act as a deterrent for would-be smugglers of human beings.

Malta has registered a 30 per cent increase in immigrant arrivals compared with last year. Lampedusa has received 190 per cent more than last year. There is no indication that this increase was due to Frontex patrols. Indeed, last year there was a slight increase compared with 2006 figures and Frontex patrols were in place then as well. Fomenting the idea that Frontex operations are futile would play in the hands of those, including European states, that would prefer to stay idle and let the southern peripheral states face their fate alone in this matter.

It is for these reasons that the government has insisted on an extension of Frontex patrols. This insistence was assiduously taken up by Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil who succeeded in committing a further €30 million from European funds to increase and extend such patrols for the present and immediate future.

The pull factor pretext will soon be brandished the more we come closer to some form of burden-sharing mechanism, even if voluntary , within the EU. The main obstacle over the years to an adoption of some kind of burden sharing has, over the years, taken two forms. One is the crude and blunt objection: "Burden sharing is unacceptable because public opinion in different member states would not accept it; ask us anything but not this". The other more subtle, but more insidious, argument put forward against burden sharing was, and in some quarters still is, that laudable though such initiative might be to illustrate in practice solidarity among EU member states, such solidarity might act as an incentive or magnet for would-be immigrants. Immigrants would arrive in increasing numbers, knowing full well that in the fullness of time they would be comfortably resettled in some other member state.

If accepted, this argument would bar any kind of solidarity with states that are hard hit by the immigration phenomenon. No Frontex. No burden sharing. No resettlement ... lest more immigrants would arrive!

The argument is fallacious for a number of reasons: Immigrants have been arriving in Malta ever since 2002 - with or without burden sharing. So long as deep differences in wealth and prosperity remains between North and South, the flow will continue. Desperate people do desperate things; they put their life in peril by crossing deserts to Libya and risk their lives in rickety small boats on their way to Europe.

The pull factor argument is rearing its head even in local circles. The same quarters which criticise the government for not being forceful with the EU and which clamour that sovereign nations in Europe should, by the wave of some magic wand, accept resettlement of immigrants, protected or not, from Malta, are now, in true hypocritical fashion, whining that burden sharing will act as a pull factor for immigrants to Malta!

The red line has been drawn. Malta will insist, if need be, even at the next European Council, that a reference to the setting up of a voluntary burden-sharing mechanism under the auspices of the Commission be inserted in the Council conclusions. Nothing less will be acceptable.

Dr Borg is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs