‘Not a lot’ of pledges to Malta

Ten EU member states volunteered to take a total of 323 refugees from Malta at a specially convened conference yesterday but the majority, including some of the larger ones, made no pledges.

“I know this is not a lot,” admitted Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, “but it’s a first good step. Malta will obviously continue to lobby together with the Commission to convince more member states to help Malta.”

The Labour Party said Malta had been “humiliated” and its immigration policy was a failure.

This was the first-ever pledging conference organised by the European Commission, specially for Malta, which took place at the margins of an extraordinary Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting in Brussels.

‘Malta will persevere’

The 323 to be resettled in the 10 states, under a 2008 scheme also designed for Malta, will come from the 2,700 on the island who enjoy international protection.

Germany – the largest EU member state – made the biggest pledge, saying it would take 100 migrants in the coming weeks. Others included Portugal, Spain, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Hungary and, surprisingly, the Netherlands and Denmark, both traditionally sceptical about the concept of burden sharing.

Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, which participate in the Schengen free-border area but are not members of the EU, also declared their availability to take some refugees.

Some of the large member states, most notably the UK and France, were not among those making pledges.

“We will persevere in convincing others to come on board,” Dr Mifsud Bonnici said when asked to comment about this.

Over the past few days the Commission has been making strenuous efforts to bring member states aboard. High-ranking EU officials have contacted interior ministries across Europe to make Malta’s case and convince them to share its immigration burden.

However, the EU is not known for the resettlement of refugees. In 2010, only 5,000 were resettled in the 27 member states in contrast to 75,000 in the US alone. Canada also took more than the EU as a whole last year.

EU interior ministers are now expected to return to the issue in a month’s time and it will also be tackled during the next EU summit meeting planned for June.

The Labour Party described the pledging conference as a failure for the government’s immigration policy. It said the government’s attitude was humiliating Malta, which had ended up begging without being given any help.

The party said this confirmed Joseph Muscat was right when he said two years ago that the Solidarity Pact for burden sharing would not work.