|
If there is one issue that has strained relations between Malta and Italy it is immigration. As the weather gets nicer, more boatloads of immigrants are to be expected to reach our shores or go further up to Italy, but Ambassador Alvise Memmo will avoid the summer heat as he returned to Rome just after giving this interview
From a helicopter of the Italian Military Mission in Malta, the 67-year-old Italian ambassador, Alvise Memmo, says he saw Malta in all its splendour.
“It is from up there,” he says, “that I could grasp so many things which you wouldn’t realise from the ground”.
 For the last four years, using the helicopters of his little battalion here, he could see the islands from above.
“I have to say it’s a unique experience,” he adds, shortly before leaving the islands for good to return to his native Rome for retirement after a four-year mission here. “For example, walking around the islands you don’t grasp the grandness of the bastions and fortifications. Take Manoel Island; you walk along the shoreline and maybe get a glimpse of its splendour, but from above you see so much more.”
It is from these same helicopters that one can also get a glimpse of what’s looming on the horizon, approaching towards these little islands of ours and heading towards the boot-like Italian peninsula further up.
With the clement weather paving the way for easier and relatively safer trips of immigrants towards the Italian mainland, Malta is bound to come face to face with boatloads of them in transit or in distress.
The heat of immigration did pit Memmo in some highly charged situations amid controversial declarations coming from both capitals.
In March last year, Malta came under an unprecedented attack from a leading Italian prosecutor, Domenico Platania, when he accused the islands of closing an eye on illegal immigration just in the wake of a fatal landing of Chinese migrants in Sicily by a Maltese trafficker.
“Malta is not collaborating with us and it's not just with this case,” Platania had said. “We have several other precedents where we’ve identified those responsible for human trafficking but we have not managed to obtain their extradition. The problem is not judiciary, but political, because Malta by now has become a fundamental link for illegal migration towards Italy.”
At the same time, the Italian press was talking about a diplomatic war between Rome and Valletta, while Foreign Minister Michael Frendo was cornering Memmo with a Note Verbale demanding that the Italians disown Platania’s outburst.
“I would say immigration was the only area where this happened,” the diplomat says about controversies between the two countries. “Relations are excellent, however unfortunately Italy and Malta are faced with this problem of immigration, in different proportions of course. We both have this problem of immigration, legal, illegal, clandestine – it’s a problem with a thousand faces.”
The main bone of contention straining our relations centres around the return of immigrants from Italy, which Malta would resignedly have to take because, according to the Italians, they would have left from Maltese waters.
“We’ve had this problem between Italy and Malta because in some cases it was necessary to repatriate the immigrants who had left from Malta, in line with international laws and the readmission agreement between Italy and Malta,” the ambassador concedes. “I wouldn’t really call it a controversy but a negotiation, you see.”
About Platania’s declarations, Memmo insists he was only representing himself and his views were in no way shared by the country.
“They were marginal events,” he says. “I wouldn’t give them so much importance. They were out of place, personal declarations on which we shouldn’t waste a lot of time. I assure you that on an institutional level, between the foreign ministries, relations have always been kept cordial and correct. Of course they are complex questions that need continuous examining. Platania’s declarations are certainly not shared, because as I said we have always worked well together. Of course every request has to be examined, not only about illegal immigration but also when it comes to extradition. Where human lives are concerned we have to be very attentive.”
I tell him some of the highest-ranking AFM sources speak about the cunningness of their Italian counterparts who inform Malta immediately upon seeing boats leaving Libyan waters even when they are not in distress, to pre-empt them from going further north.
“I haven’t heard of this,” he said. “I know there is ongoing collaboration between the armed forces because there are many boats passing through national and international waters, but I haven’t heard anything about such cunningness. I don’t believe this is the case, absolutely, also because Italy is a country of great reception figures so it’s not possible to speak of cunningness on the side of the Italian forces. As you know these immigrants have, as their destination, Italy, so they pass by Maltese waters, few hundreds of metres from the coast, and proceed to Italy.”
Immigration, he adds, is not a problem Italy and Malta can solve on their own.
“It’s a problem of massive proportions, and we are geographically the first countries of reception of millions of immigrants, together with Spain, Greece and Cyprus. Once they reach European countries, in one way or another, legal or illegal, immigrants go to reach their relatives in Austria, France, Germany or the UK. So even this becomes a problem which should concern Europe. Italy and Malta do not have the financial capacity to host all these millions of migrants wanting to cross over. We can’t solve this on our own and that is why the Italian and Maltese foreign ministers have intervened in Brussels. Fortunately we have an attentive ear of former minister Frattini, the commissioner responsible for immigration, who has some plans to do something on a European level. It has to be a coordinated effort and we have to get everyone to realise this is an international problem.”
Another issue still unsolved upon Memmo’s departure relates to online gaming, where the Italians have just banned Maltese internet gaming sites to their gamblers in the latest bout of protectionism in the face of the supposed European single and free market.
Quite unbelievably, the ambassador says he knows nothing about it.
“We have never received any communication from Malta on this. I didn’t even know there is a problem… I know there is a problem with France but we haven’t been told anything officially about a problem with Italy. I hear it from you for the first time.”
Which is strange, given that less than a month ago, Foreign Minister Michael Frendo declared publicly that Italy along with France was acting against Europe’s economic principles.
“Italy or France, it’s wrong, because we believe that the Gambelli case decided by the European Court of Justice has very clearly laid out that there is a single market in online gaming and that this issue is very important for the internal market of the EU,” the minister had said. “If a country wants to impose limitations on gaming, it should not do it only on online gaming but also on land based gaming. If a country decides to support the monopoly institution and stop online gaming then it’s using two weights and two measures.”
In any case, with the ambassador unaware of the controversy, the argument has to be shelved for his successor.
In the meantime, Malta is making use of the millions donated to it by Italy through the financial protocol, which has served for numerous infrastructural projects, patrol boats for the army, road works and the first sewage treatment plant yet to be built.
“I’m very happy with the way they were spent because everything we agreed upon is almost ready,” he says. “We had identified several projects and planned with Maltese authorities how they were to be spent.”
One of the projects includes the restoration of the Chapel of Italy inside St John’s Co-Cathedral, which is under the expert hands of Italian restorers, who are also restoring the old organ built in the 1500s.
There is another chapel, however, whose present state generates resentment among the Italian community in Malta after it was only partly restored with Italian funds and left half-finished by the government.
It is the Santa Catarina d’Italia chapel in Valletta, home to a Mattia Preti altarpiece painting and a historical religious meeting place for Italian generations. The Italian community has petitioned the government to complete the restoration as a sign of gratitude towards Italy’s contribution to Malta, but no further funds have been made available so far.
“The chapel of Santa Catarina belongs to the Maltese cultural heritage, and being the church of the Italians we are emotional about it,” Memmo says. “It was the centre of Italianità and of the Italian community for so many years, and so many personalities have been married there, even Guido de Marco got married there. It’s a pity that this chapel which formed part of Auberge d’Italie is left unfinished. It would be a great joy for us if the Maltese government had to finish restoration works there, so the Italian community could continue to go to mass there and hold its functions, because at present we’re guests at the church of the Spaniards.”
The retiring diplomat says he will take a lot of impressions with him. Malta was “a discovery” for him despite its closeness to Italy.
“My career took me to faraway places, North America, South America, Australia, Asia. After Geneve it was the second European destination. It was an unknown island for me. I have to confess that not knowing Malta and its history I was immediately struck by the great history of this country. It’s unique in the world; it had so many foreign presences here, from the Phoenicians to Romans, Spaniards, Normans, and the incredible adventure of the Grand Masters, about which very little is known abroad, the enormous richness they brought with them for Malta, the great cultural heritage there is. It’s a great pity that in Italy very few know you have the megalithic temples here, even older than the pyramids. They know about the pyramids, everyone goes to Egypt to visit them, but here you have the oldest standing building ever built by humans. It’s in Malta and it’s completely unheard of abroad, even among cultured people who travel. For me it was a great discovery.”
The Italianità of the Maltese will remain impressed on his memories. “I would say 90 per cent of the contacts I’ve had here were in Italian. The president who welcomed me here, Guido de Marco, and the one who bid me farewell, Fenech Adami, speak perfect Italian,” he says, adding Tonio Borg and Louis Galea to his list.
“Italy is part of here, it’s part of your earth and psyche,” he says.
So how come Berlusconi never came here on an official visit?
“In 1995 Scalfaro came here, and during my four-year term here we’ve had two state visits, President de Marco in Italy and President Ciampi came here… Well Berlusconi didn’t come because all the others came! As you know Berlusconi is very, very busy.”
And with an election round the corner and his own coalition comrades hitting back at him, he might as well stay there and try to get re-elected.
|
