Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s recent comments on migration have been branded “nonsensical” by migration experts, who fear the statements point in a direction incompatible with international law.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday at the start of Malta’s EU Council presidency, Dr Muscat said: “People who have the right to asylum should be allowed in and get processed. Those who don’t, shouldn’t. Right now that certainty does not exist.”
Neil Falzon, a human rights lawyer and director of Aditus Foundation, said the Prime Minister’s apparent suggestion that only refugees would be allowed to enter Europe was a “worrying statement” which ignored the fact that access to asylum was a universally protected human right.
“With this statement the Prime Minister is forgetting that refugee status needs to be determined by a State on the basis of procedures assessing a person’s claim,” Dr Falzon told the Times of Malta yesterday.
The Prime Minister is forgetting that refugee status needs to be determined by a State on the basis of procedures assessing a person’s claim
“These procedures should be fair, effective and efficient so as to ensure no refugee is returned to a country where his life or safety is at risk.
“The Prime Minister cannot possibly be suggesting that the EU selfishly shifts these procedures onto third countries, as with the EU-Turkey Statement, as many third countries in the region are simply unable to offer refugees safety, protection and dignity.”
Under the controversial EU-Turkey deal agreed last March migrants travelling to Greece are sent back to Turkey if their asylum application is unsuccessful. In exchange, EU countries offered Turkey incentives such as increased aid and visa-free access to Schengen countries. Despite having called the agreement a “bad deal” and potentially a “pushback policy” prior to its introduction, Dr Muscat suggested in December that a similar policy should be put in place in the central Mediterranean.
“The EU needs to acknowledge that the agreement with Turkey needs to be replicated for the central Mediterranean, and therefore member states involved directly in the migration crisis but also transit countries like Nigeria,” he said.
Integra Foundation director Maria Pisani, however, said the suggestion of replicating the arrangement in the region completely ignored evidence that Libya could not be considered a safe third-country, as required by international law.
Dr Pisani said the Prime Minister’s most recent comments pointed in a dangerous direction and raised more questions than they answered.
“Everyone has the right to access asylum, so to take a decision on whether someone is eligible for asylum before they apply is nonsensical,” she said.
“This latest statement harks back to the attempted pushback of three years ago: you cannot deny access to protection.”