Muscat’s critics say EU’s December deadline a disappointing outcome

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat left for Brussels in a bid to get his EU counterparts to "translate words into action" and declare it was ready to show solidarity to states like Malta, Italy and Greece on the migratory pressures they face.

The result has been debatable. While the hawkish Muscat has long made strong words a trademark of the way he deals with the EU, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil claims the wording of the Council conclusions are a "step back" from previous conclusions and that it puts paid to the prime minister's feet-stamping.

The EU's 28 heads of state and government met on Thursday and Friday for the traditional October summit, with an agenda dominated by two last-minute additions: migration, as result of the recent tragedies in Lampedusa in which hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers perished in two shipwrecks, and the bugging of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone by the United States, as new reports of NSA spying stole the show at Brussels.

Confirming Malta's fears, the NSA's spying overshadowed the summit, more so to the press's amusement when Merkel - who called Barack Obama to complain that her mobile phone had been bugged - arrived in an official car with a '007' number plate, the codename for the fictional British spy agent James Bond.

On his arrival at the Justus Lipsius building, Muscat sarcastically commented on the "very interesting, almost surreal" fact that the summit would focus on the digital economy at a time when frontline countries were facing migratory pressures. Asked by the Maltese press whether he was concerned about the tapping allegations, Muscat quipped the US "would have nothing better to do" if they had bugged his phone.

With migration on the agenda on the insistence of Malta, Italy and Greece, in less than 24 hours the three countries won the approval of six other member states for a proposed draft conclusion on migration, adopted by the Council at the eleventh hour. By the end of the meeting, 15 countries - including France, Germany and Austria - had been brought on board.

Government sources told MaltaToday they were "extremely satisfied" with the outcome. Muscat, visibly tired by four hours of intensive talks, said he would be holding his European counterparts accountable if the conclusions were not to be implemented.

But what was the outcome?

EU states agreed to take their first action by December 2013, a delay that did not go unnoticed by the Nationalist opposition or Alternattiva Demokratika. Muscat said a number of counterparts were vociferous in demanding that the Council sees that "words are turned into action" by the end of the year, and that despite Malta's uphill struggle it would not be waiting for the June migration summit of 2014 to get results.

The original conclusions proposed by the Lithuanian presidency were "unacceptable" according to Muscat, while the draft conclusion proposed by Malta, Italy and Greece included a proposal for a returns policy, the implementation of return flights by Frontex, the sharing of responsibility - rather than "burden sharing" - and prevention measures.

But Muscat said a group of member states have opposed the proposals "on principle", happier to fork out money for southern states. He is still not ruling out using his veto to make his case.

The official conclusions mention "determined action" to prevent the loss of lives at sea, enhance cooperation with countries of origin and transit, reinforcement of Frontex, swift implementation of the European border surveillance system EUROSUR, and for the European Commission to report in December on the work of the newly-established Task Force for the Mediterranean.

Like Muscat, Italy's Enrico Letta and Greece's Antonis Samaras expressed satisfaction at the conclusions.

But there are doubts as to whether Merkel was in tune with the South's concerns. She supports changing the Dublin rule under which countries through which asylum seekers first enter the Union - like Malta - have to take care of them. But she said southern states were not alone in facing the problem, with Germany having itself accepted large numbers of asylum seekers.

Judith Sunderland, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the conclusions only reinforced a "keep them out" approach, despite references to responsibility-sharing and action on saving lives at sea. "But we won't know what that means concretely until a specially created European Commission-led task force reports back in December. And EU leaders won't take up the issue again until another summit scheduled for June 2014, when boat crossing season will be in full swing once again. Many more may have died in the Mediterranean by then."

That is why the December deadline has irked Nationalist leader Simon Busuttil.

The Green Party has joined a chorus of disapproval on the postponement of 'concrete' action by the European Council, after the EU's heads of state pushed a decision on the steps to be taken on the Mediterranean migration issue to December.

"Muscat's simply playing for time. The new conclusions add nothing to what was already said in the past years or in preceding Council meetings. Actually, they are a step back because it does not even make a specific reference to Malta's actual situation, as happened in recent years. The Prime Minister did not manage to influence what was discussed in the Council," Busuttil said, saying that migrants' relocation to other member states was omitted from the conclusions.

"This puts paid to Muscat's stamping of feet," Busuttil added. "He criticised the voluntary burden sharing system that relocated some 700 migrants because it was not mandatory. Now he has not even managed to win the support for a voluntary system. This shows it is only persuasion and reason that can convince other EU states to take concrete action."

Even the Greens described the outcome as a "shameful" one.

"At the moment of truth the European Council was incapable of putting into practice the European values of respect towards life and human dignity," AD deputy chairperson Carmel Cacopardo said.

"The EU has for years been postponing decisions on real and practical solidarity on the Mediterranean migration issue as an EU issue... we understand that it is necessary that Malta uses strong language in its criticism of the EU position, but we hope that the human dignity of migrants is respected at all times."

Additional reporting by Matthew Vella