The Italian Military Mission in Malta is expected to wind down operations next year after more than 40 years of service on the island as part of a cost-cutting exercise by the Italian government, The Sunday Times of Malta has learnt.
Officially, both the Maltese and Italian governments said the presence of the Italian military is no longer necessary as the Armed Forces of Malta has acquired the necessary expertise and personnel not to require any back-up.
“The re-dimensioning and winding down of the Italian Military Mission in Malta is planned for 2016 and has been long coming,” a spokesman for the AFM said.
“We are currently in discussions with the Italians to see how our collaboration can keep going despite this decision. We are very interested in keeping our bond especially where it comes to training,” the spokesman added.
Sources close to the Italian mission told this newspaper that the presence of Italian military personnel will be almost completely diminished and only a “token presence” will remain on the island.
“There will be some three to four officials left in Malta to offer consultancy to the Maltese military,” the sources said.
We are very interested in keeping our bond, especially with training
However, the search and rescue operations, currently conducted by two Italian helicopters and assisted by 30 personnel including pilots, engineers and technical staff will not stay.
An AFM pilot said the Maltese army has been investing millions of EU funds to equip itself and is now in a position to have better helicopters than the two Italian AG212s which are still on the island.
“Although the Italian assistance was valuable for us, and we will surely miss it, we cannot really expect the Italians to keep investing in Malta when we are getting all this money and equipment from the EU,” another Maltese AFM pilot said.
The state of finances of the Italian government and its stagnated economy were also an important factor in the decision taken by the Italian authorities.
An Italian member of the Maltese mission said that although small, the presence of the Italian Military Mission in Malta still costs the Italian exchequer millions a year.
“So this will be a popular decision in Italy even on the political front.”
The Italian Military Mission started its operations in Malta in 1973 and took various shapes and forms including the training of the task force personnel in Dom Mintoff’s time to adopting a purely military training role later.
When contacted, Italian ambassador Giovanni De Vito would not confirm or deny the move.
“The Italian Military Mission is an important asset in this context: joint Maltese-Italian teams work daily side-by-side to improve interoperability, the Italian helicopter component helps enhancing capabilities in search and rescue activities until gaps are filled.
“The current mission is a flexible instrument and can certainly be reconfigured along the way to better respond to future tasks,” he said.