Refugee crisis | PM hopes to lay foundations for ‘new system’ during Valletta Summit

Muscat on migration: Synergy needed to solve global crisis • Video by Ray Attard

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat hopes to see the foundations of a new system being laid during a EU-Africa Summit taking place in Malta in November.

“It is time for political leaders to stand up to be counted. The Valletta Summit on Migration will bring together European and African leaders in the hope of finding the synergies needed to provide medium and long-term solutions for this global crisis.

“Our aim is to lay the foundations for a new system to manage this new phenomenon, the dimensions of which are hardly comparable to anything before.”

The Maltese Prime Minister was addressing a lunch organised by the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in occassion of the 450th anniversary of the Great Siege of Malta. Muscat reiterated that, in order to start managing migratory flows better, there needs to be a Bretton Woods of migration.

“The Valletta Summit does not aspire to be the Bretton Woods moment, but wants to sow the seeds for countries of origin, transit and destination to realise that this is the way we should go,” Muscat said.

During the middle of the last century, nation states became aware that the economy was changing, and that no single country could aspire to muster the global economic trends effectively without a degree of cooperation.  That paved the way to the Bretton Woods system which eventually gave birth to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Muscat, who once threatened to push back asylum seekers but has since admitted his mistake, pledged to keep the Maltese values alive.

“Despite giving respite to so many thousands of immigrants along the years, we have from the beginning said that we will help Italy and Greece during this moment of crisis,” he said.  “We will do this because we do not believe that you can credibly advocate solidarity only when you need it.  We needed it in the past, but nobody helped us.  Others need it now, and we will help.  This is the heroism inspired by our history, a history that allows tiny Malta to stand tall along others.  I assure you that I will do all it takes, under my watch, to keep our values alive.”

He spoke of shock at the realisation of indifference showed by several European countries on humanitarian tragedy when, a few months ago, “Matteo Renzi myself literally pulled all stops to the indifference of the rest of Europe”.

“Matteo Renzi, another European leader with a European heart and mind, and myself saw a face of Europe which we found hard to digest.

“We saw blank faces and had to face political talk such as ‘we cannot go back telling our citizens that we are taking in migrants who are landing in other countries’. Some of these leaders who after long hours of debate agreed to help countries like Italy and Greece, are now turning on us to assist them.

“That is why, despite years of facing the migrants tragedy coming from the South on our own helped only by countries like Italy, my government decided not to return a blind eye to our brothers and sister who are landing all over Europe.”

He said that Malta - as a small island nation with a history of being compassionate and turning bitter wars into synergies - will live up to its name again: “We will not sulk. We will not be indifferent. We will lead by example.”

Muscat said the world was facing a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions, with hundreds of thousands of fathers, mothers and their children fleeing from wars.

“The world suddenly seemed to realise we have a problem on our hands, particularly after the picture of the Syrian boy, Aylan, whose dead body was washed ashore.

That one picture shook the mighty of the world. It also shocked and angered me as any other parent in the world. But my shock and anger on seeing Aylan’s body on a shore, was not different from the pictures of tens of children I have seen dying at sea along the years, among the thousands who lost their lives in the Mediterranean Sea and whose picture never made it to the frontpages.”

The Prime Minister said that today’s realities were a result of the cold shoulder that Europe and the rest of the world have been giving to countries like Spain, Greece, Italy and Malta who deal with such crisis every day.