Cecilia Malmstrom, who will be visiting Malta this week, has a hard act to follow. She is the new EU commissioner responsible for home affairs and takes on the responsibility for immigration and asylum policy from the previous vice-president of the European Commission, Jacques Barrot.
In his two-year stint, Mr Barrot had fully understood Malta's difficulties and had placed the Commission on track towards delivering the solidarity we needed. It was Mr Barrot who launched a specific pilot project to enable protected migrants in Malta to move to other EU countries. Regrettably, his mandate came to an end before he was able to turn this project into a truly effective solidarity instrument.
The buck has now been passed to Ms Malmstrom who, coming from Sweden, sets off without a proper understanding of the specific Mediterranean context. But as a former MEP in the Liberal group and as a former European Affairs Minister there is every reason to believe that she will be open-minded in her approach and genuinely interested to search for solutions.
That, at least, is my first impression of her and I would give her the benefit of the doubt. Her decision to visit Malta less than three months into her mandate certainly strikes the right chord.
There are four issues I hope Ms Malmstrom would look into during her visit to Malta.
She should first visit Malta's open and closed centres to see for herself the disproportionate nature of Malta's burden in dealing with the influx of migrants who found themselves here after they were originally headed to mainland Europe. She may not be pleased with the conditions even if the situation has improved given that the influx has all but stopped over the past months. In detention centres, for instance, there are now fewer than 300 migrants and conditions are markedly better than when I first visited the Safi barracks in 2006 and found appalling conditions.
Whereas there is no doubt that the Maltese authorities should always seek to improve conditions - and a great deal of EU funding is available to help us do just that - it cannot be denied that conditions degenerate when the sheer number of arrivals by far exceed our capacity.
Seeing for herself could help Ms Malmstrom appreciate that Malta does indeed carry a disproportionate burden by reason of our geographic and demographic situation, as has been recently established in the most unequivocal manner by a European Parliament study on burden-sharing.
Secondly, I hope that her visit will help her appreciate why the EU's external borders agency - Frontex - should be reshaped to help those countries that most need its help.
Sadly, the recent EU border surveillance rules did the opposite. Far from enabling Frontex to deal more effectively with the interception of boats on the high seas, the rules continue to shift the burden onto southern member states.
This explains why the Maltese authorities felt that if these rules had to be applied Malta would have no option but to stay out of Frontex missions, an irony of the first order.
Ms Malmstrom must do whatever it takes to reverse the negative, if unintended, consequences, of these rules and get the agency to help those countries that most need it.
Thirdly, Ms Malmstrom should commit herself on solidarity.
Whereas the Commission's pilot project for Malta was a laudable initiative, it has not given the desired results and the commissioner must see to it that solidarity is made to work.
The Commission is yet to come out with a legislative proposal to enshrine responsibility-sharing into EU law. Yet, the EU legal framework must include binding obligations on all member states to pitch in. Ms Malmstrom must overcome the resistance that EU countries have shown in shouldering their responsibility and announce a legislative proposal that gives true meaning to solidarity.
Finally, Ms Malmstrom should act to stem illegal migration routes wherever they come from.
Illegal routes are organised by a network of criminals that have fully exploited the plight of desperate migrants. But, unless illegal routes are stemmed once and for all, Europe would be aiding and abetting this criminal activity and more lives would be put at risk. This can no longer be tolerated.
Stemming illegal routes will require Ms Malmstrom to engage constructively with third countries from where migrants embark on perilous journeys to Europe. Spain did it with Senegal. There is no reason why Ms Malmstrom should not do the same with Turkey, from where migrants leave for Greece, and with Libya, from where migrants head to Italy.
If Ms Malmstrom wants to achieve a common European asylum policy during her term she must get EU countries to move from burden-shifting to a true sharing of responsibility.
I trust that Ms Malmstrom will see this for herself during her visit this week in Malta and commit herself to deliver solutions.
www.simonbusuttil.eu
Dr Busuttil is a Nationalist member of the European Parliament.