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Matthew Vella
A “number” of EU Member States are in favour of a proposal being discussed for Malta to host its branch of the EU border agency, due to be set up in May, according to the Home Affairs and Justice Ministry.
The European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders, which will be hosted in Poland, the EU’s easternmost frontier, will formally meet for the first time with national representatives from the EU’s Member States in late May.
A proposal to have Malta host its own branch is also in the offing. Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg confirmed that Malta is still interested in hosting a central Mediterranean branch of the agency.
The Italian daily Il Tempo has also reported that a branch is likely to be set up in Malta. The newspaper reported that the first director of the agency will surely be an Italian, given that Italy is in “the frontline of the fight against clandestine migration”.
In comments given to MaltaToday, the spokesperson for the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini would not confirm the possibility of setting up a Malta branch, although he said the agency’s management board could discuss “various work modalities, including that of possible specialised branches.”
Friso Roscam Abbing, the spokesperson for Frattini, said that according to Article 16 of the regulation establishing the agency, the management board can decide on the setting up of specialised branches in Member States.
Roscam Abbing said the first meeting of the management board, which has not yet been set up, will be held at the end of the month. “So far nothing has been discussed let alone decided,” he said about the possibility of Malta hosting a subsidiary of the agency.
The new agency will kick off in late May with an initial budget of EUR6 million (Lm2.6 million) but is expected to increase to over EUR30 million (Lm13 million).
Malta was one of the bidding countries to host the border agency, along with other states in Eastern Europe, but it lost out to Poland.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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