Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/944442
maltatoday WEDNESDAY 21 FEBRUARY 2018 News 7 answered "no" when asked if he favoured a pushback policy. Muscat came close to hon- ouring his pre-electoral pledge by laying preparations for the pushback of a number of mi- grants to Libya until he re- ceived an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights. Muscat justified his ac- tions by insisting that this was a way to make Europe "wake up and smell the coffee". The last standoff with Italy In August last year, 102 mi- grants, mainly from North Af- rica, were rescued from a boat 39km off the Libyan coast on Sunday by the Liberian-regis- tered tanker Salamis. Italy finally accepted the mi- grants left stranded on the tanker, allowing them to dis- embark on the Sicilian coast after Malta refused them entry for three days. Ironically Muscat's hard-line stance on the Salamis also earned him the praise of the Lega Nord in Italy. A new dawn What really led to Malta be- ing relieved of the pressure of continuous boat arrivals was the Italian reaction to a tragedy at sea that led to over 400 refu- gees from Syria and Palestine losing their lives in the Lampe- dusa shipwreck. Unlike previous right-wing governments, the Italian gov- ernment under Prime Min- isters Enrico Letta, Matteo Renzi and Poalo Gentiloni was no longer engaged in bickering with their Maltese counter- parts over who is responsible for saving lives at sea in the Mediterranean. "The Italian coast guard has been ordered by the Italian government to intervene and collect any boat people that even the Maltese authorities are technically obliged to in- tervene and collect," a senior government official told Mal- taToday in August 2014. Operation Mare Nostrum, launched after the Lampedusa tragedy, included the use of amphibious ships, unmanned drones and long-range helicop- ters with infrared equipment, with six navy ships, each with crews of between 80 to 250 men. The highly successful res- cue operations had seen some 80,000 migrants arrive in It- aly in 2014 and practically no boats in Malta. Yet despite the drop in the number of arrivals, the Mal- tese army remained pro-active in saving lives in the Mediter- ranean. In the meantime Mus- cat seems to have realised that celebrating Malta's heroic role in saving migrant life earns Malta more respect as a na- tion and more legitimacy to our demands than calling on others to "smell the coffee" and threatening pushbacks. In this sense Muscat has be- come much more like his pre- decessor Lawrence Gonzi, who also celebrated Malta's role in saving lives. But unlike Gonzi, Muscat could afford to do this without even having to worry about the arrivals of boats in Malta. Although operation Mare Nostrum was terminated by the end of 2014 and replaced by a downscaled EU operation called Triton, Malta still did not see any more arrivals in subsequent years. In March 2015 Joseph Mus- cat openly admitted threaten- ing to push back irregular mi- grants had been a mistake. The calm before the storm? The Maltese and Italian gov- ernments have repeatedly de- nied accusations hailing from the Italian right-wing Opposi- tion, that this was the result of an agreement linking migra- tion with oil exploration rights, insisting that this was the re- sult of close collaboration be- tween the two countries. As a result of the 'good rela- tionship' with three succes- sive centre-left Italian gov- ernments, Malta has been spared from boat arrivals in the past four years. Most asy- lum seekers in the past years have reached us safely. ln 2016 Malta accepted asylum appli- cations from 1255 people who arrived here by plane. Yet there was no drama, which triggers racist instincts associated with boat arrivals. This breathing space has ex- orcised the spectre of rabid racism and xenophobia and has given Malta time to start enacting integration policies, an area where previous Nation- alist governments had failed to act. It has also contributed to a shift in Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's discourse from advo- cating push back in 2013 to a more humanitarian tone. Italian elections may change all that. Faced with an Italian right- wing government, Muscat may strive for common ground on a tougher stance uniting the two governments against European migration policies while seek- ing new agreements with Libya to keep migrants from making the crossing. But for Muscat it would be more difficult to evoke anti- immigrant nationalism now that he has opted for an open labour market and an econom- ic model thriving on foreign labour and wealth generated from the sale of Maltese citi- zenship. Still for Labour any confron- tation with a centre-right Ital- ian government may repre- sent an opportunity to strike against the PN's international allegiance to the European People's Party which includes Berlusconi's Forza Italia. This could serve short-term elec- toral interests months before MEP elections in Malta. jdebono@mediatoday.com.mt full circle on migration? Just three months before his first electoral test as PL leader, Muscat sent shockwaves by presenting a hawkish plan to parliament which vaguely hinted at Malta suspending its "international obligations" if numbers of migrants were to reach a critical point Silvio Berlusconi has declared that migrants saved close to Malta 'will have to be taken to and disembarked in Malta'