The outcome of the recent EU Council meeting was disappointing on a number of different levels. First, the Prime Minister’s much-touted determination to get his EU counterparts “to translate words into action” on the vexed issue of irregular immigration was a damp squib. The much softer issue of showing solidarity with Angela Merkel over the bugging of her mobile phone by the United States predominated.

Secondly, the conclusions of the meeting made only broad references to “determined action” to prevent loss of migrants’ lives at sea, to enhance cooperation with countries of origin and transit, and for the Commission to report in December on the work of the newly established Task Force for the Mediterranean. For Malta, therefore, all action fell short of any actual help.

Thirdly, following a precedent set by Joseph Muscat in 2008 after the outcome of the Asylum Immigration Pact when he was still in Opposition, the conclusions of the Council meeting were greeted with name-calling and derision by PN leader Simon Busuttil.

Given that immigration is probably the most important and intractable of Malta’s foreign policy issues, the least the nation should expect of its political leaders is that they should find a way of adopting a bipartisan approach, as was the case until Muscat’s election as leader of the Labour Party, to ensure a long-term solution to this pressing problem. Maltese political infighting does not help the country’s cause abroad.

Migration is an extremely complex humanitarian and political issue. It means different things to different parts of Europe. In Malta, it is clearly focused on the impact of disproportionate numbers of black Africans on Maltese society. But elsewhere in Europe the problem embraces migrants from Africa and the Middle East, and also the subsequent arrival of their dependents and, especially in northern European countries, the economic magnet effects of giving EU citizens the right to migrate to any other European country and to draw social benefits there. Far-right parties throughout Europe are in the ascendant.

This is the bigger picture against which the Prime Minister – ideally supported by the Leader of the Opposition – should be deploying his diplomatic efforts. Every Maltese ambassador in Europe should be making Malta’s case. That case should not simply be based on a description of the tragedy of lost lives in the Mediterranean, nor on the social impact of so many thousands of refugees on a small, densely populated island, important though these are.

Much more importantly, Malta must use its ingenuity, working closely with other like-minded nations, to make specific proposals for changes to the iniquitous Dublin II agreement, which unfairly penalises frontline states like Malta, to propose a formula for some form of equitable and mandatory burden-sharing. In doing so, it must demonstrate that it, too, is prepared to share a part of the burden.

In parallel, it must be prepared to support radical changes to EU internal migration laws, and must encourage greater involvement in helping transit countries, like Libya, and African countries of origin with generous and targeted programmes of financial and technical aid. It must also encourage a more coordinated and effective system of repatriation of failed asylum seekers to countries free of conflict and the resolutionof outstanding responsibility-sharing issues affecting migrants rescued at sea.

The Prime Minister has six weeks of hard diplomatic slog between now and the next Council meeting to achieve some movement on this most difficult issue, let alone the results he is seeking.