Prime Minister Joseph Muscat yesterday delivered another stern warning to the EU on immigration, saying the Government would adopt a strong stand with politicians and did not exclude any action on future EU issues if no agreement was reached, while not exposing people’s lives to danger.
Answering questions after a statement by Interior Minister Emanuel Mallia, Dr Muscat said he was disappointed by the comments of the Opposition and its failure to share a common stand with the Government. The Opposition was trying to score political points.
The Leader of the Opposition had understood nothing about how he should deal with the EU, Dr Muscat said. He would tell Dr Busuttil that he could expect more. In fact, he expected to be even firmer against the EU and would take no lessons from the Opposition, which had achieved nothing in nine years on this issue.
The new government had found an Immigration Pact not worth the ink it was written with.
This Government was insisting that burden-sharing should be mandatory, but Malta’s hand was weakened by the fact that the former Government had accepted voluntary burden-sharing.
Dr Muscat said he would stand firm, and if no agreement was reached on migration in the EU, he might not be prepared to agree on other issues in the future.
It was unacceptable that the EU came together to tackle the financial crisis and Malta too had to fork out funds, but the same was not happening where people were concerned.
As for the EU funds given to Malta, those were Malta’s by right, Dr Muscat said.
While the practice was for migrants to be taken to the nearest harbour, he had had talks with Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta as the rescue took place on Friday and it was decided to bring the migrants to Malta.
At the time there were fears of an even bigger death toll and rescuers could not waste time counting people. Dr Muscat said he had therefore personally decided that the migrants should be brought to Malta.
Malta was not excluding anything in its talks with the EU but in every circumstance, people’s lives would not be put at risk.
On Frontex rules of engagement, Dr Muscat said Malta was being careful. There had to be clear rules. He had told EU President Van Rompuy yesterday that improved Frontex operations would be a step forward if itwas known where the migrants would be taken.
His fear was that the EU was playing for time until winter set in. But the situation was getting worse, especially because of the increased number of migrants from Syria. The EU needed to find new ways to encourage legal migration, as Commissioner Malmstrom had suggested.
Should Syria be treated as a special case for the granting of visas, for example?
He underlined that the Salamis issue had not been emergency and the Government prohibited the vessel from entering Malta because its captain wanted to play the hero. In contrast, the current situation was an emergency and the Government could not act otherwise.
While corpses were picked up, others were drowning. It was not the opportune time to discuss legal issues. AFM personnel had informed the Prime Minister that the number of dead could not be verified as otherwise precious time would be lost. Dr Muscat had declared he would take political respon-sibility for the actions taken during the rescue.
The incident took place in Malta’s search and rescue zone and the practice was that immigrants would be taken to the safest harbour.
On his visit to Libya, Dr Muscat said that it was a visit that showed solidarity with the Libyan people who wanted the rule of law to reign.