With the Italian government threatening to halt its €10 million per month Mare Nostrum mission, the European Union’s border agency, Frontex, is in the process of establishing a new operation, to be known as Triton, possibly made upof assets supplied by France, Germany, Spain and Finland.

However, the implementation of the new mission has been held up bywrangling between Italy and Maltawith regard to the new rules of engagement stipulating which country would take the rescued migrants.

The argument between Italy and Malta centres round whether migrants saved at sea should be taken to the nearest safe port or whether, as Italy has argued for years, they should be automatically taken to the country coordinating the rescue.

A few years ago, unseemly squabbling arose between the two countries in one or two high-profile incidents where a tug-of-war took place between Italy, Malta and, sometimes, other countries over who should receive the immigrants in distress.

Absolutely correctly, Malta argues that international maritime law clearly stipulates that anybody rescued in distress on the high seas should be taken to the nearest available safe port. There are well established practical reasons for these international rules.

First and most importantly, they are designed to ensure that people in danger of losing their lives should go to the nearest place of safety for treatment.

Secondly, in the heat of a rescue operation it is essential that lines of communication should be kept as short as possible.

Thirdly, this particular maritime law has centuries of precedent behind it. There is no overriding argument for reversing it now.

What Italy is arguing for countermands well-established international law. Why? Italy has done an outstanding and selfless job over the past year through Mare Nostrum. While it is understandable that, in the face of domestic pressure at so many migrants being landed on its shores and in the light of Italy’s dire economic circumstances, it might opt to reduce or eliminate its involvement in the operation. But there must be another reason.

The presumption must be that Italy resents the size of Malta’s search and rescue region from which the island derives much strategic and economic benefit. Any attempts by Italy to chip away at Malta’s search and rescue region, however, have been resisted in the past and should continue to be resisted today.

But the crux of the issue is that Italy and Malta bear the major burden of immigration from North Africa. It is about time that other EU countries also carried their share. If the EU cannot stand back, as it rightly states, on humanitarian grounds, then the corollary must be that the EU has to find a way of sharing the burden.

Despite crocodile tears, the EU Council has failed to make progress on the issue. The bottom line is that EU countries – despite mouthing platitudes to the contrary – do not appear to have the political will to adopt a comprehensive burden-sharing policy on this most vexed of human tragedies.

Each EU country views the problem of immigration differently. Each wants to protect its national self-interest and burden-sharing is low on the agenda. But this remains the heart of the problem and until EU leaders face up to it, Frontex’s efforts will pale in importance. It will take a broader political vision than is being displayed to resolve these issues.