Together against human trafficking

The dispute between Malta and Italian Home Affairs Minister Roberto Maroni about who is to take onshore the illegal immigrants on the Turkish cargo ship Pinar just 25 miles from Lampedusa illustrates most vividly the need for the European Union, with the European Commission leading, to address vigorously important knotty issues in the business of human trafficking with a view of solving them.

Over the past five years, Malta has been at the forefront in pushing the EU to act and, although much has been achieved, the issue of illegal immigration or, rather, the lucrative business of human trafficking, has to continue to be addressed relentlessly and with unremitting tenacity.

As I had occasion to tell Commissioner Jacques Barros, in dealing with Malta the Commission should draw on the Aristotelian vision of justice and (as paraphrased) treat "equals equally and unequals unequally".

In this struggle to deal with human trafficking organised by international criminal organisations, Malta is an unequal being not only the smallest EU member state in territorial terms but also by far the most densely populated.

The tremendous overall success of the EU as an organisation over the last half century can also be attributed to the fact that in its actions and policies it has sought consistently to take into account the peculiarities of each of its member states while still steaming forward on the course of integration.

That spirit must never be lost. May it also imbue Mr Maroni in his perceptions of Malta (which, I remind him, rightly continues to be consistently supportive of Italy in a multitude of issues, candidacies and policies across the whole gamut of international fora) and which he must visit in order to see and understand for himself.

Meanwhile, we should all give full and vociferous support to the position of Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici and the Maltese government on the position that wherever anyone is saved at sea (and, therefore, irrespective of which Search and Rescue area), s/he should be taken to the nearest safest port.

This principle had been consistently followed until this incident arose.

Yet, let not this dispute make us lose our focus on the fundamental underlying issue: The illegal immigration issue is not just a matter for the frontline southern European states to be left alone to squabble among themselves as to who takes whom and where.

The fundamental underlying issue is that illegal immigration is a matter for all the EU member states to tackle. Responsibility sharing, or burden sharing, belongs to all EU member states and not just to the Mediterranean littoral ones. The Commission's leadership needs to be more evident in the drive to achieve this in practice.

Have we forgotten the uproar about President Nicolas Sarkozy's original plan for a Mediterranean Union (MU), made up only of the littoral states of the Mediterranean? There was strong resistance from the central and northern EU member states asserting that the Mediterranean region was an area of interest to the whole of the EU and not just to its Mediterranean members. Now that all EU member states form part of the MU, adopting burden-sharing affords all EU states the opportunity to give practical value to this shared interest.

Just as a start, as I submitted to Mr Barros in his recent intensive meeting with the Foreign and European Affairs Committee, the Commission urgently needs to push for adoption of suggestions that Malta has put on the table and still remain unaddressed.

I will mention two in particular, raised during my tenure as Malta's Foreign Minister responsible for relations with the EU: (a) for UNHCR to allow EU member states to deduct from their yearly quota commitment with UNHCR any refugees or persons with humanitarian status they agree to take from Malta and (b) that EU member states agree on a compulsory burden-sharing mechanism on a rotational basis in terms of persons saved from the Search and Rescue area of a neighbouring non-EU state and brought to shore in an EU member state.

Now that Mr Maroni has referred the matter to the Commission, let us focus on the real issue and unite our forces to achieve true overall burden-sharing by all the EU member states.

Dr Frendo was Malta's Foreign Minister in 2004-2008.