Italy offers diplomatic help on issue of repatriation

Italy was prepared to help Malta, through its established diplomatic channels, to discuss the repatriation of immigrants with countries of origin, said former Italian Prime Minister Lamberto Dini.

Mr Dini told The Times that Italy was prepared to help the island on immigration "because your problem is also our problem".

He said that following the approval of the EU's Pact on Migration and Asylum, EU member states, including Italy and Malta, now needed to put pressure on the European Commission to put this pact into effect.

Mr Dini, the president of the Italian Senate's Foreign Affairs and Immigration Commission, was speaking on a whirlwind visit to Malta. The visit comes a fortnight after that of Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni, when both countries agreed to set up a forum to coordinate their efforts on illegal immigration.

It was also agreed to rope in Cyprus and Greece into a separate project aimed at tackling matters related to illegal immigration at an EU level in a coordinated manner to keep the subject high on the EU agenda.

Addressing Parliament's Standing Committee on Foreign and European Affairs, Mr Dini said the problem was not only an Italian, Maltese or Spanish problem, but of the whole EU.

He said the EU needed to react to the challenges illegal immigration posed to Mediterranean countries. Through the pact, the EU had accepted to share the burden most exposed countries were heaving under.

"This device has to come into effect today, not tomorrow or the day after. It needs to be implemented more rapidly. Italy has a number of re-admission agreements with many countries, including Libya," he said.

On Libya, Mr Dini said this was not an easy country to deal with but stressed that closer cooperation between the two countries, and Malta, was indispensable to tackle the immigration problem.

With regard to Malta, Mr Dini said the country "has a strategic voice in Europe" and that its views have "more weight than its size".

Former Foreign Minister Michael Frendo, who presides over the parliamentary committee, asked Mr Dini for Italy's help to push forward Malta's request to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR).

He explained that the UNHCR held an important key to the success of the voluntary burden-sharing scheme.

Every EU member state had a yearly commitment with the UNHCR on the number of refugees or people holding humanitarian status they accepted from other member states. The UNHCR was standing firm on its refusal to allow member states to deduct the refugees taken from the voluntary burden-sharing scheme from countries' annual quota.

Dr Frendo felt the UNHCR had to "relax its rules" and allow such deduction, at least for extreme cases such as Malta's. Earlier yesterday, Mr Dini also paid courtesy visits to President Eddie Fenech Adami, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, Foreign Minister Tonio Borg, and Speaker Louis Galea.