What has the Valletta Migration Summit done for Malta, other than to stimulate more debate about traffic problems? This was a key milestone for the country, its largest international conference to date and a worthy curtain-raiser to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) later this month and Malta’s presidency of the European Council in 2017.
Malta is also cleverly laying out its credentials to be the natural partner for North Africa in the EU.
Next, the country should look to position itself at the front of the queue for development finance initiatives, particularly in Libya, given the cultural affinity that exists. Helping to create economic security will automatically seize the initiative from the people smugglers.
In his speech to the Maltese Parliament on Tuesday evening, European Parliament president Martin Schultz was right to highlight the country’s “melting pot Malta itself is a country of immigrants and of emigrants. Its geography – at the meeting point of the Maghreb, Europe and the Levant – its trading culture and its commitment to a services-based economy make it capable of seeing an opportunity as well as a challenge in the migration pressures on its doorstep.
The view among summit delegates was that Malta stepped up and acquitted itself well. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s call to widen the migration argument to include all the nations of the world is correct. If there were a system in place to disperse refugees to all countries, not just within the EU, then the immediate burden of migration on frontline states would diminish. Hopefully, that message will be passed back to the parliaments of more than 60 states that attended and then on to the UN.
If there were a system to disperse refugees to all countries, not just within the EU, the immediate burden of migration on frontline states would diminish
One message from the Valletta summit has become clear. We are all now Europeans and global citizens: security, trade and development policy need to go hand in hand to tackle problems of this size.
But another message was overlooked. The government needs to reach out to the private sector to harness the immense power of the financial markets to support reconstruction and development. If not, given the demographics of Africa, we will be facing this crisis not simply for the spring to come but again and again for the next 20 years.
Remember, the summit was called following the loss of life in April this year of 800 migrants off the coast of Libya. What have we learnt in the intervening six months?
First, you cannot stop migration by putting up walls: desperation and determination are staggering in their ingenuity.
Second, Europe needs migrants because its population is, quite simply, dying out; legal channels for migration are needed.
Third, Africa feels migratory pressures much more keenly than Europe, despite an enormous wealth gap – only one in 10 African migrants actually leaves the continent.
The focus of the final summit declaration on more efficient ways of remitting money, and providing channels for legal migration, are welcome. But an opportunity has been missed to go further.
We could have seen much stronger commitments from European countries to dismantle some of the protectionism that makes genuinely open trade with Africa so difficult: a level playing field for commerce enables every African nation to develop its own areas of competitiveness and competency.
A host of leaders talked dutifully about jobs but where was progress on helping African nations industrialise? Development aid will never be as effective a tool as private sector investment for sustainable economic growth but no mention was made of venture capital or capital markets as the engines of SME expansion.
We need a way to engage the private sector and the trillions of dollars of impact investment that are looking for a home. The €1.8 billion EU trust fund agreed at the summit may be a start, but $45 trillion is sitting in mainstream investment funds that have publicly committed to incorporate environmental, social and governance factors into their investment decisions. It would only need a small fraction of this money to start moving into impact investment for it to have an enormous effect on the economies of developing countries.
If projects are measurable from start to finish and the outcomes are predictable and measurable too, then the funds can start to flow. However, innovative thinking is required and the EU could use its power in the capital markets to seed that process.
This unprecedented humanitarian crisis has stretched European structures, brotherhood and neighbourliness to breaking point.
A human tragedy that Malta, along with Italy and Greece, has more bitter experience of than most, it is also an existential challenge to the leadership, solidarity and ingenuity of EU member states and their ability to look beyond the horizon to help those countries that have yet to make the move to stable, peaceful, developed economies.
James Knight is a Brussels-based senior associate at Etoile Partners, a geopolitical consultancy.