Luxemburg, 13/06/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday in Luxemburg, ministers of the interior failed to establish common ground for an agreement on the Maltese idea of dividing the number of immigrants saved off the coast of Libya between countries in the EU27, despite the sharp increase in fatal shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean. Taking a position against this apparent unity on the Maltese problem, the French minister for immigration, Brice Hortefeux, declared: “This appears very difficult to me, we cannot have two weights and measures for immigrants coming from the Mediterranean”. He declared that it was technically difficult to establish criteria for distributing immigrants between member states.
Poorly shared collective responsibility: Since mid-May, several tragic wrecks and mass embarkations of illegal immigrants have taken place between Libya and Malta. Initially, the latter was accused of inaction but has attempted to respond. The Maltese minister for the interior, Tonio Borg, therefore proposed that the survivors were received by the 27 in turn, and arriving at the Luxemburg meeting, he described the current situation as “a complete mess”.
According to Borg, around 600 immigrants die every year trying to get into Europe according to the most conservative estimates. Malta has saved 7,000 people in five years despite the small island only having a population of 400,000. It received 350 immigrants alone this year, 250 of them in the last two weeks. Borg explained that each country should subsequently make a commitment to taking their turn in accepting the number of immigrants in proportion to its population. The minister readily agreed to the idea that the ship that was closest to the point of distress was obliged to go to the rescue of the people in danger. He exclaimed that “the problem is who will accept those immigrants”. In compliance with his wishes, immigrant survivors will be sent to the closest country, such as Malta or the Italian island of Lampedusa, and then sent to different countries which will then examine asylum requests or repatriate them. Nonetheless, the Spanish minister of the interior, Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, was alone in expressing clear support for this idea. His German counterpart, Wolfgang Schäuble, affirmed that they certainly needed to take measures to prevent people drowning in the Mediterranean but added that this question of sharing the burden was a “long road”. Burden sharing is even more difficult to accept for Germany because over the 1990s it had to face alone an influx of refugees from the Bosnian war. Addressing journalists, Schäuble made several references to this situation. According to one diplomat, “there is no pre-established distribution key” and burden sharing can only be done informally. Hortefeux also said that they needed to deal with immigrants who had died (this follows the French navy finding 18 bodies at the beginning of the month). He declared that “maritime law does not contain anything on the dead, this is a question that needs tackling”.
Broken promises: As expected, the commissioner for immigration, Franco Frattini, launched an appeal to member states to keep their promises to provide equipment to the EU border agency, FRONTEX, which only has 10% of materials: planes, helicopters, boats, it had initially been proposed (EUROPE 9440). Frattini said that he “saw no objection” from member states to providing effective provision of the equipment requested. The Commissioner interpreted this silence as a sign that countries “are ready to confirm to provide further equipment as soon as possible”. Frattini also announced that he was ready to release an additional budget of €7 million, in addition to the €35 million already planned, to fund other FRONTEX missions or extend those that will soon be launched. The number of illegal immigrants arriving in the Canaries has dropped significantly since the implementation of FRONTEX coordinated patrol operations in collaboration with West African countries. The “Nautilus” operation is planned for 25 June until the end of the summer in the central Mediterranean but currently only Malta, Greece, Germany, France and Italy have planned to take part in it, which risks compromising the objective sought after. It is reasonable to think that as long as member states are unable to establish common rules of engagement during operations, collective efforts will be restricted to emergencies, which even puts the joint patrols planned at risk of being delayed. The Commission is therefore hoping for a definition of these rules. Mr Borg said that “unless there is more participation, there is a very good possibility that the Frontex patrols will not even start this summer”.
In a letter, the director of the Ilkka Laitien Agency pointed out that, “Frontex is not and will never be the panacea to problems of illegal immigration”. He underlined that the agency's mission was not to carry out rescue operations but to protect the EU's external borders.
Libya clouding issue: Several sources say that the situation in the central Mediterranean has been poisoned by the very controversial attitude of Libya, which is cashing in on Union aid - “Libya is using dubious manoeuvres to avoid fulfilling its obligations”. Around 15 Frontex experts recently went to southern Libya (whose borders are particularly porous) to look at aid possibilities. No signs have come from Tripoli about participating in Mediterranean patrols. (bc)