The Malta Agreement, put together on 23 September by France, Germany, Malta and Italy with the support of the Finnish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, did not succeed in Luxembourg on Tuesday 8 October and did not bring together more countries than those that had already volunteered in previous cases of disembarkation (see EUROPE 12333/1). As a sign of the difficulty in finding a common line on this temporary arrangement, the ministers themselves have publicly provided different information...
For the French Minister for European Affairs, Amélie de Montchalin, who replaced Christophe Castaner, who remained in Paris after the attack on the police prefecture, the meeting was nevertheless “positive”, because this “cordial” discussion was an opportunity to “raise awareness” of the fact that the issue is a “humanitarian” imperative.
The countries ready to support this scheme – which is based on the voluntary distribution of people landed in Italian or Maltese ports – is reportedly about ten, she said. According to one source, in addition to the four authors of the agreement, there are also Portugal, Luxembourg, Ireland, Slovenia, Sweden and Finland after the end of its Council Presidency.
Confusion about which countries support the agreement
However, as Luxembourg Minister Jean Asselborn stated at a press briefing, there are in fact only 7 Member States that want to take part in this mechanism... According to other ministers, it is not Slovenia, but Lithuania that would be on board and only two additional Member States – Portugal and Luxembourg – have, ultimately, really expressed support for the Malta text...
According to the German Minister, Horst Seefoher, a total of 12 States would support the agreement, including the four countries of departure...
In any case, these countries have all – with the exception of Slovenia or perhaps Lithuania – participated in the past, on a case-by-case basis, in solutions for the landing of NGO vessels and will continue to do so depending on the situation. No commitments or signatures were therefore made on Tuesday, as the situation remains quite similar to that before the Malta Agreement and does not set out in black and white a model for recurrent intervention.
According to the European Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, on Tuesday there was no question of asking Member States for “concrete commitments on this mechanism” or signing anything. “The discussion continues”, he said.
For her part, Finnish Minister of the Interior Maria Ohisalo simply said that she still hoped that “as many Member States as possible will participate”, in order to give impetus to more comprehensive work on European asylum reform. A reform that, in any case, can only be achieved with “the new Commission” and new proposals, she noted. On this Malta agreement, a new technical meeting will take place anyway, on Friday in Brussels, the Commissioner said.
This agreement was discussed over lunch as part of a broader exchange on migration. But while this meeting made progress in Paris’ estimation, other Member States did not change their position, some of them considering that this mechanism, even if temporary and voluntary, could be transformed into a corridor for illegal immigration with knock-on effects.
Among the non-participants: Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, but also the Visegrad countries, Hungary being, for its part, simply opposed to the very idea of allocation. Some non-Member States associated with Schengen and Dublin, such as Switzerland, have also indicated their unwillingness. For Switzerland, one of the problems is that all migrants are likely to be allocated, while some more closely resemble a profile of so-called ‘economic’ migrants rather than of asylum seekers, who are likely to receive real protection.
For Bern, the real urgency at the moment would be in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean and it should also be possible to respond to it.
‘Competition’ of migration routes
It is no coincidence that three countries in this part of the EU, which have been particularly affected recently by increases in migrant arrivals, came out on Tuesday demanding renewed attention.
Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria have issued a joint statement asking their European counterparts to look again at the situation in their countries and also proposing to their partners to set up a relocation of asylum seekers from their countries.
These three countries still call in this declaration for a “true European return mechanism”. As for Cyprus, the Minister of the Interior, Constantinos Petrides, reiterated on Tuesday that his request for the relocation of 5,000 people made this summer had still not received “concrete answers”.
These three countries want to “draw the EU's attention to our particularly vulnerable regions”, their ministers explained. Greek Minister Michail Chrysochoidis pointed out that between May and “today”, arrivals in his country had increased by “240%” and that Turkey had to do absolutely everything to stop any new migration routes.
But the EU must also do its part and possibly explore the feasibility of “new financial assistance” in Ankara.
The three countries concerned were thus unable to join the Malta agreement, even if they share the principle, their wish being also that other European countries quickly relieve them in the care of asylum seekers. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)