Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1000343
24 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 JULY 2018 OPINION TELL you what: let's play a little game. I'll quote from a random newspaper article I read last Thursday, 28 June 2018 – with a few details blacked out – and you try and fill in all the missing blanks. Ready? Here goes: "European Union interior ministers yesterday approved the text on a migration and asylum pact [...] The Maltese delegation was led by XXXX [...who...] said that the pact will serve as an important tool to direct the European Commission and member states to work better in mat- ters related to migration and asylum. [...] "[However] the pact was shot down by the XXXX, which [...] said the wording of the pact includes the fol- lowing: 'for those Member States which are faced with specific and disproportion- ate pressures on their na- tional asylum systems' [there should be] 'on a voluntary and co-ordinated basis, bet- ter relocation of beneficiar- ies of international protec- tion from such Member States to others'. "Giving its reasons why it was not happy with the pact, the XXXX said the system created in the pact is volun- tary, it did not oblige other EU countries to take part..." There. Sounds easy, doesn't it? We all know that the Maltese delegation was led by Prime Minister Joseph Muscat; and also that the pact in question was shot down by Opposition leader Adrian Delia, for all the reasons outlined above. We also know that the Nation- alist Party spokesman for migration issues is [former Interior Minister] Carm Mifsud Bonnici: and that, together with Nationalist MP David Stellini, he issued a press statement this week claiming that "it was disap- pointing that EU leaders failed to agree on making the distribution of the immigra- tion burden between mem- ber states compulsory." So there: that just about wraps it up for all the miss- ing blanks, doesn't it? Until you realise that... um... no, actually, it doesn't. Those answers are all wrong... Noticed the catch yet? I said it was an article I read last Thursday; not one that was written for publication last Thursday, or any other day this week. In reality, those are excerpts from an article published in The Malta Independent on 26 September 2008... almost 10 whole years ago. And who, pray tell, led the Maltese del- egation to Brussels in 2008? Why, it was... wait for it... Dr Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, of course. Who else? And re- mind me now: who was Op- position leader at the time? Yes, you guessed correctly. It was... drums rolling... Joseph Muscat... Now: fill in all those blanks again – with the correct answers, this time – and see where it takes us. Ten years ago, Carm Mifsud Bonnici signed an agreement which was more or less identical to the one signed by Joseph Muscat last Wednesday. Both pacts included a 'bur- den sharing' clause which was equally 'voluntary'; and both Muscat and Mifsud Bonnici reacted to the two agreements in the exact same way... almost down to the exact same wording, in fact... with only one, teenie- weenie difference. Somehow, they simply switched sides while we weren't looking. Without the bat of an eyelid, without the tiniest of embarrassed coughs or nervous giggles, they calmly and casually just slipped into each other's shoes: contradicting eve- rything they had said a few years earlier, while appro- priating the very arguments that had previously been levelled against themselves. By each other. I mean... it's just... well... Beautiful. That's what it is: a stunningly beautiful, monstrously grotesque, deliciously cynical paradox of the most absurd variety imaginable... the kind that would be laughed off as 'too far-fetched' even in a Marvel Comic Superhero movie. But then again, movies and comics are entitled to be outrageously daft or incon- sistent, because – unlike politics – the results of their inconsistencies don't actu- ally impact anybody's life in the real world (though you'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise, seeing how some people react to movie disap- pointments online...) This, on the other hand, is slightly different. It is disconcerting, to say the least, that two supposedly antithetical political parties can get so hopelessly lost in their respective need to automatically counterpoise each other... incessantly, irrationally, over everything under the sun... that they actually forget which party is which, and what it is they're supposed to be 'criticising' or 'praising' at any given moment. Take Mifsud Bonnici, for instance. How can he pos- sibly account for the curi- ous fact that a 'voluntary burden-sharing agreement' can be an excellent thing, when negotiated and signed by himself... yet the same agreement can also suddenly transform into a 'disappoint- ing failure', just because it was negotiated and signed by someone else? I wouldn't blame him for not answering, because the question turns out to be trickier than even I originally intended. There is more than just gloriously barefaced double-standards involved here. For let's face it: the agreement signed on Wednesday is a disappoint- ment: no two ways about it. It is nothing but a repeat of the same half-hearted ap- proach that didn't work in 2008, and has precious little hope of working today. So, you can add a dose of overwhelming irony to the mix: Mifsud Bonnici is right in 2018, about something he was wrong about in 2010... just as Muscat was right in 2010, and wrong today. The 2008 pact was supposed to result in other EU mem- ber states assuming part of the immigration 'bur- den' themselves (horrible word, I know; but horrible only because it is apt). Yet in practice, only eight countries respected the quotas sug- gested by that agreement: and there were clear imbal- ances even between those eight volunteers. Between 2008 and 2012, for instance, Sweden took in more than three times its allotted quota; while Belgium, Greece and Aus- tria took twice their share. Germany, Denmark and the UK each under-fulfilled their own quotas, while Malta met its target more or less exactly. Nearly all the remaining 20 EU countries, however, assumed no part of the 'burden' at all. And as we can all see from the recent stand-offs, and the complaints raised by Italy (and echoed by Malta) ... the same basic issues that the earlier 2008 agreement was Raphael Vassallo Those incredible, shape-shifting Position may be co-funded through European Union Funding/Bilateral Funds PROGRAMME MANAGER (EU FUNDS) Applications are invited for the positions of Programme Manager (EU Funds) in the Ministry for European Affairs and Equality. Applications will be received at the Corporate Services Directorate, Ministry for European Affairs and Equality, 31B, Tal- Pilar, Marsamxett Road, Valletta, VLT 1850 by not later than noon of Friday, 13 th July 2018. Further details may be obtained from the Government Gazette of 28 th June 2018. Application forms may be downloaded from: https://publicservice.gov.mt/en/people/Pages/PeopleResourcin gandCompliance/FormsandTemplates.aspx