Giving voting rights to immigrants "is a red line that cannot be crossed", Nationalist MEP Simon Busuttil said yesterday.

"It would send the wrong message, that this is a free-for-all. It could also constitute a pull-factor and would give them the power to elect a government, especially if you consider that the last election was determined by only 1,500 votes," Dr Busuttil insisted.

"In our situation, the last thing we can think about is giving immigrants the right to vote. We would entrench the idea that it's ok to come settle in Malta as if nothing happened," he said.

He was speaking about his immigration report, approved on Wednesday, which harmonised the position of the European Parliament on many aspects of immigration. The report called for migrants to be granted voting rights in local elections, without specifying whether this refers only to general or local council polls.

He said the clause was included in his report because the communists, the socialists, the Greens and the liberals had united in their vote.

The Labour MEPs did not manage to convince their socialist counterparts about Malta's position unlike Dr Busuttil who, he said, managed to bring the whole of the rightist EPP-ED on its side.

He said the issue was "crucial" because in its current situation Malta could not afford to give voting rights to the 5,200 or so African immigrants living in the country.

Dr Busuttil tried to exclude the clause by putting an alternative report to a vote. But, despite the insistence of all the Maltese MEPs, the European Parliament approved the original report with the new clause.

The report was adopted with 485 votes in favour, 110 against and 19 abstentions.

Dr Busuttil accused the Labour Party (PL) of being inconsistent in its approach to illegal immigration by speaking harshly in the Maltese Parliament but voting haphazardly in the European Parliament and not putting enough pressure on its fellow socialists to vote in Malta's favour.

He said the Labour MEPs had abstained from important votes that would affect Malta, sometimes disagreeing between themselves over their positions.

But the PL said Dr Busuttil was only trying to be deceptive because he had voted exactly as they did, adding that if he was trying to criticise the Labour MEPs' voting pattern, he was criticising his own.

Furthermore, despite the influence which Dr Busuttil claimed to have in the European Popular Party, he had not managed to include, in his report, a clear reference to compulsory burden sharing.

Indeed, the report welcomed the Immigration Pact, which only spoke of voluntary burden sharing.

When Labour MEP Louis Grech had proposed the setting up of an immigration agency, Dr Busuttil had not even turned up for the vote and the EPP-ED voted against.

Meanwhile, the other Nationalist MEP David Casa expressed his "utter regret" at the vote of the European Socialists and European Greens on the report.

"The EPP-ED is vehemently against the granting of these political rights to immigrants and will remain so in the future," he declared.

"The Labour Party is waving the veto right in Malta and yet in Strasbourg it is failing to wave the Maltese flag," he insisted.

cperegin@timesofmalta.com

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