Prime Minister Joseph Muscat this morning renewed his criticism of the EU over immigration, saying it had 'forgotten everyone'.
Speaking in a recorded interview on One Radio before a group of 130 migrants were brought to Malta last night, Dr Muscat said immigration remained a major problem, even if the number of arrivals in Malta was currently not as big as in the past.
Over the past few days, he said, there was a situation where at any one time there were between 10 and 25 migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean.
Malta was working with Italy to save lives and find temporary solutions for this phenomenon. The working relationship between the two countries was very good, he said.
"But Europe has forgotten everyone, when the crunch came, we only found the Americans to help us," Dr Muscat said, in a reference to the fact that a US warship yesterday rescued several hundred migrants.
Dr Muscat thanked the AFM for its 'five-star work'. He also thanked Italy and the US. He said he did not agree with xenophobia and Malta would do its duty to save lives but it would also stand up to its interests.
GOVERNMENT RAISING ITS MOMENTUM
Earlier Dr Muscat promised that the government would continue to raise its momentum of activity, with the focus over the coming weeks being on precarious work, decriminalisation of some drug offences, legislation on pensions and savings, Gozo, the repatriation of assets and changes on tax on rents.
Dr Muscat said economic growth seen by statisticians were being translated into tangible results, such as improved job creation, where Malta was leading the EU list. The government was not only creating more jobs, but the number of unemployed had decreased for four months in succession and was now below what it had been in the last month of the former government.
The government, he said, intended to announce incentives to encourage the employment of people who were over 45/50 years old.
At the same time, the government would clamp down on the ‘theft’ of unemployment benefit by those who manifestly did not want to work and created all sort of excuses to stay on the dole, Dr Muscat said. Taxpayers’ money cannot be used to fund laziness,” Dr Muscat said.
Referring to the country-specific recommendations issued by the EU last week, Dr Muscat said the choice of words by the commission was not the best with regard to pensions. Malta would continue to insist that pensionable age did not need to rise, more so when two large EU countries had actually campaigned to reduce pensionable age. It was clear, Dr Muscat said, that the EU was taking the message.
Malta, however, did heed other points raised occasionally by the EU, Dr Muscat said. For example, he agreed that traffic would be a main issue. This would not be restricted to the quality of the roads but also issues such as travel times which affected productivity and industry transport costs including the fact that trucking a trailer in Malta cost more than putting it on a ship.