Malta contesting ‘nearest port of call’ in Frontex guidelines

Malta’s minister for justice and home affairs Carm Mifsud Bonnici said Malta would participate in Frontex missions only on condition that a clause in its guidelines, which lays down that rescued migrants are taken to the country that hosts the Frontex mission - irrespective of the nearest, safe port of call - is changed.

Mifsud Bonnici was speaking to the press at the Malta International Airport conference lounge, after holding meetings with Frontex chief Illka Laitinen.

Laitinen said he had seven scenarios Malta and Italy could be faced with in an ensuing outflux of migrants from Libya, as the ensuring conflict threatens to send more migrants into Europe fleeing war.

He said he could not give any guarantee that European states would be providing military assets for any humanitarian missions to cope with the migrant influx.

He said the pushbacks which once formed the backbone of an Italian-Libyan agreement to send migrants back to the north African country, were now no longer an option. “In this scenario people who will be fleeing Libya and the north African coast would surely not be in a position to be sent back to where they came from.”-

Laitinen also reiterated that any Frontex mission, such as the Hermes operation with Italy, was dependent on the voluntary pooling of military assets by European states. “Any operation is yet to be decided but it will not cause any burden to be carried by any country.”

He said estimates of an 1.5 million influx of migrants into Libya by Italian minister of the interior Roberto Maroni, were speculative and based on claims by the International Organisation of Migration of between 500,000 to 1.5 million refugees in and around Libya.