Internal bureaucratic divisions between the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament were brought to the fore yesterday, as a delegation of the EP Budget Committee revealed that funding for EU immigration programmes has been slowed down by the Council’s failure to enact a legal basis for the financing mechanisms.
Ralf Walter (PES Germany), head of the EP budget delegation, addressed the media yesterday at the end of a two-day visit involving talks with Government, AFM and NGO representatives.
“We realise that the budgetary allocation for Border Protection, among other things, needs to be higher than was foreseen,” Walters admitted yesterday. “And we will try to address this. But this is not a promise. Whether we can increase the funding or not is a question that depends on having a proper legal basis in place. That legal basis is the competence of the European Council. We can help, but only if the Council of Ministers approves this legal framework.”
The delegation also revealed that for the period 2007-2013, the EU has allotted a total of EUR 5.86 billion for immigration-related programmes throughout the EU’s 27 member states: testimony to the seriousness with which the EU takes the issue of irregular migration.
But Walters also acknowledged that the nature of the funds themselves – which require applicants to front up to 35 per cent of the total, and which cannot be used for infrastructural purposes – may be problematic for the particular circumstances of Maltese NGOs.
Answering a direct question by MaltaToday, Walters admitted that he was “not content” with the progress made so far regarding the situation of migrants and refugees in Malta. This was the main purpose of the delegation’s visit, although the MEPs were not taken to any of Malta’s closed detention centres. After visiting the Marsa Open Centre on Friday, Ralf Walters suggested that there is room for improvement both in the general conditions of accommodation, as well as in efforts to integrate migrant communities within society.
Ironically, however, in a press statement issued just a few hours after the delegation flew back to Brussels, Labour leader Alfred Sant shot down any notion of integration programmes, arguing that these “do not make sense” in a country as small as Malta.