The national interest... in immigration

What should we make of Joseph Muscat’s proposal that Malta should emulate Italy by putting its national interest first? And how does this tie up with Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni’s rhetorical question as to whether it makes sense for Italy to remain in the EU?

These statements raise a number of questions with regard to democracy, Europe and the interplay between political discourse at national level and EU decision-making processes.

It is quite obvious that political parties’ ultimate aim – winning democratic elections – plays a key role in forming the stances taken by national politicians. Governments and political leaders can quite easily become slaves to electoral calculations rather than choosing the more strenuous path of educating the population and of leading the way with a long-term vision in mind. It is not difficult to see that this becomes even more acute when a few thousand votes separate one political party from the other at the polls.  

A few basic truths about the interplay between individual Member States of the Union and the European Union’s institutions themselves should be explained clearly if statements such as ‘the national interest’ and ‘Brussels’ are to make any sense at all.

While the Union has been given the task of developing a common immigration policy aimed at “ensuring, at all stages, the efficient management of migration flows, fair treatment of third-country nationals residing legally in the Member States, and the prevention of, and enhanced measures to combat, illegal immigration and trafficking in human beings,” the EU still lacks clear rules with regard to the integration of migrants and a proper border police force, while its rules on asylum are being challenged.

More importantly, the Member States have not provided the Union with the necessary resources which would enable it to accomplish these missions effectively. This means that Member States have agreed to transfer an important part of their competence to the EU without, however, providing it with the necessary resources to exercise that sovereignty.

So what political weight does an appeal to “put the national interest first and foremost” have in this context? And in what way can Malta “be tougher” with regard to immigration?

The past weeks have demonstrated that individual governments can, of course, come up with a series of measures which prove that they’re “taking a tough stance in the national interest”. The spats between Italy and Malta and Italy and France show quite clearly, however, where this one-upmanship leads and it is highly probable that Malta stands to lose out massively if this trend becomes the norm. Small states are always the biggest losers when international cooperation collapses. 

Leaders should be pressed to state exactly what their concrete solutions to a given problem are, in particular when those leaders forward the claim that the government of the day is “being weak” on a sensitive issue such as immigration.

The media, wherever its sympathies lie, owes it to the public to elicit concrete answers from the country’s leaders on sensitive matters like these. Journalistic ethics demand no less.

Several commentators have suggested that the recent unfolding events in the Maghreb require a serious paradigm shift in terms of immigration policy, state sovereignty and international cooperation and that dealing with the current immigration crisis requires an entirely novel approach and an entirely new set of rules.

The big dilemma for Europe, as I see it, is whether the EU’s often cumbersome decision-making processes are adapted to bringing about the necessary shift in time before Member States decide to go it alone.