Muscat: ‘Blaming migration for joblessness factually untrue’

Malta wants to put private sector involvement in sub-Saharan Africa on the EU agenda in 2017 when the island assumed the European presidency together with Slovakia and the Netherlands, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.

He was addressing an audience at the Social Democrat think-tank Freidrich Ebert Stiftung in Berlin, where he earlier met German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In his speech, Muscat denounced attempts at blaming migration for joblessness as “factually untrue and morally repulsive”.

Muscat described the Mediterranean as a “complex and difficult” region that presented Europe with a constant migratory stream of people “driven northwards by despair and hope”.

He did not fail to remind his audience that Europe “has not and is not doing much” to assist his country, dubbing it an “evident failure of European solidarity.”

He said Europe, but also the United Nations and international financial institutions, had to seek an active, long-term role in conflict resolution and economic development inside the regions pushing migrants to the continent. “Ultimately the solution of the problem lies in finding realistic ways and means of helping the countries concerned in eliminating the causes of the problem.”

He gave an insight into his political mindset: a realist who quotes Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski, admitting to having “no prescription for the total salvation of mankind.” So on migration, he ‘provocatively’ suggested to his audience that material interests for the private sector, and not simply human compassion, can drive opportunity inside Africa and create the economic conditions to stem the flow of migration.

He said that it should be the EU that spurs on the private sector to contribute to economic development and employment in Africa. “We will expand on this when, in 2017, Malta will bear the responsibility of the European Presidency together with Slovakia and the Netherlands between 1 January 2016 and 30 June 2017,” Muscat said, adding that Malta Enterprise was present on the ground in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa promoting economic cooperation.

Muscat was also categorical on the repudiation of populist attempts to shift economic woes into migration, a major concern for Maltese voters that has manifested in repeated surveys.

“This is factually untrue, morally repulsive and politically dangerous. It encourages racism and xenophobia and ultimately does nothing to solve the European Union’s economic and financial problems.  Indeed, it only exacerbates them.”

On the eurozone, the Maltese prime minister defended fiscal discipline while pursuing growth-centred policies at the European level. “It is admittedly not easy to reconcile the two objectives; it is certainly difficult, but it can be done… It can only work if we promote a European Union that listens to its citizens. We are against rigidity and a lax attitude, and in favour of discipline and flexibility.”