'We're facing OBLIVION'
Malta blasts EU and says bloc WON'T SURVIVE another migrant influx
THE European Union
is facing oblivion and may not survive a fresh migrant influx this spring
unless it takes radical action to crack down on stratospheric levels of
economic migration immediately, Malta warned today.
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Joseph Muscat, the
prime minister of the tiny island which is on the frontline of Europe's
immigration crisis, blasted Brussels for its "inadequate" response to
the chaos and said the bloc must finally get its act together before it is too
late. And he said the days of simply relying on Germany to host the millions of
asylum seekers streaming into the bloc is over, insisting not even the EU's
most wealthy country can cope with another repeat of the last two years.
Mr Muscat made the
remarks as he addressed MEPs at a plenary session of the European Parliament on
the day that Malta officially assumes the six-month rotating presidency of the
Brussels bloc. He wistfully reminisced about his own time as a Brussels
parliamentarian, which started some eight years ago, when he said there were
"many smiles" in the chamber and "very few who would talk about
the crisis of immigration".
And he said he had
"no doubt" that unless the EU takes radical action now, including
rolling out migration pacts with north African countries to stem the flow of
people crossing the Mediterranean, that eurosceptics will take charge of the
bloc within a few years.
Mr Muscat also
launched into a brutal tirade against eurocrats and other EU leaders, saying
that Malta had been warning the bloc for years that its border controls were
hopelessly inadequate only to be brushed aside and ignored. He raged:
"Now the issue is much more pressing and time is not on our side. We have
been harping on for more than a decade that the migration situation in the
Mediterranean is unsustainable.
"About the
need for responsibility sharing and also the sharing of the burden of managing
the flows, which cannot fall exclusively on the shoulders of the frontline
member states, and yet we were left almost alone for many years trying to
overcome a crisis which was not our making. "The only solution we
were given and only at times was some more money but that is not a
solution."
Mr Muscat said he
would have been extremely popular amongst the "silent majority" of
voters in Malta if he had chosen to fight against a controversial
Brussels-imposed migrant quota system which is being challenged by a number of
eastern European countries.
I see no way in which one single member state can manage or absorb this
further wave
But in a swipe at
nations like Hungary, which are fiercely fighting the plan, he said:
"Solidarity is not an a la carte option which we use when we need it and
turn a blind eye to when others need it. "And so the smallest member
state, which over the years has suffered first hand the brunt of the human
plight of migration with no or little help, signed up to take asylum seekers
from other member states which are facing a crisis."
He also warned of a fresh
migrant surge from Africa which he predicted is set to hit the EU this spring
when the weather improves, adding that most of the people attempting to make
the sea crossing from north Africa to Italy will likely not be genuine
refugees. He told stunned MEPs: "Come next spring Europe will face a
new heavy influx of migrants, this time through the central Mediterranean. "Needless
to say the composition, origin and reasons why these people want to undergo the
riskiest voyage of their life across a deadly sea is different to that of
mainly Syrian refugees crossing the Aegean sea."Mr Muscat said that unless the EU replicates its pact with Turkey - under which economic migrants arriving in Greece are returned back across the Aegean - it will face a "major migrant crisis" within months.
He warned:
"Let me not mince my words. I see no way in which one single member state
can manage or absorb this further wave. Thus, the essence of the core
principles of the European Union will be seriously tested unless we act
now. "I have no
doubt that unless we are ready to take such bold moves, we would be made to
take even bolder ones in the months to come and these decisions would be led by
people who do not have the progress of the European project at
heart."
Europe has taken in
around 1.7 million migrants since the start of 201, with the vast majority
arriving in Greece and travelling northwards through the Balkans to begin new
lives in the promised land of Germany. But the signing of
the EU-Turkey deal last spring significantly reduced the number using that
route, with attention switching instead to the longer and much more deadly see
crossing between lawless Libya and Italy. cued
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