Matthew Vella

Deputy prime minister Tonio Borg wants to achieve an understanding on oil with Libya and win its cooperation in maritime patrols against illegal immigration. It’s a lofty order for Malta’s new foreign minister

Tonio Borg’s first stint as foreign affairs minister started with a bang, quite unexpectedly – reactivating Malta’s membership in the Partnership for Peace just days after the re-election of the Nationalist government by a hens’ teeth margin.
It was a bullish move, considering the antipathy such a decision bred when Alfred Sant’s Labour party lambasted Eddie Fenech Adami’s attempt at sending the military to fight overseas. Only this time, the move came without any debate, or the idea being mooted in public. With Labour in disarray as it reeled from an unexpected 1,500-vote loss in March, both Tonio Borg and Lawrence Gonzi hurried up to Brussels for their Council meeting, and there they met Richard Cachia Caruana, the permanent representative to Brussels, to reactivate the PfP membership.
“Look, not everything the government does needs be in the electoral manifesto,” Tonio Borg says when I ask him whether such a divisive foreign policy move should have been part of the PN’s programme. Indeed, it goes without saying: not everything in the electoral manifesto needs to be carried out once in government, and that goes for tax cuts too.
“The fact is that we were experiencing difficulties in obtaining certain documents presented in working councils on security, to which we did not have access. I think the army is especially happy about us rejoining the PfP because it gives them training opportunities,” Borg says.
The foreign minister is adamant on making people understand that PfP is not “a NATO thing” but more of a “working with NATO” affair. In fact, it is actually a bilateral programme with NATO – to some countries it’s a sort of waiting room before joining NATO. Others participants, like Russia or Belarus, are just hanging about in the lobby and drinking the coffee.
“I have no doubt there is no better model for us than Switzerland in its being the neutral country par excellence, and yet has one programme with NATO, which is different from the Russians’ or the Belarus’s programme, and it includes humanitarian aid and search and rescue mission. For Malta, we are excluding any sort of military alliances.”
As Borg says, this is not just a political prerogative. Malta’s Constitution actively prohibits Malta from joining any military alliances. “The PfP does not breach the Constitution – but I don’t want any military base in Malta, neither NATO membership because there is no intention for such. Apart from the fact that it is not allowed by the Constitution.”
Which gets many wondering how Malta still actively services warships from NATO countries and also from the USA. Certainly, it’s as an anachronistic argument as the 1987 Constitution and its reference to Cold War superpowers; but surely, there is an argument to be made against servicing US warships that are directly involved in military campaigns not far from the Mediterranean sea – if Malta is a neutral country, how should we define its neutrality? It’s a matter only recently brought up by George Vella, the former Labour foreign minister, who called for a discussion on the definition of neutrality, 21 years since it was carved out in the country’s highest law.
“On the subjects of warships, the matter was decided by the Attorney General during the visit of the USS LaSalle when he declared it not to be unconstitutional for the vessel to enter Malta. Neutrality in 1987 was based on non-alignment to the superpowers, unlike the Swiss model, which is in effect, a ‘neutralised’ country.
“Why not discuss the definition of neutrality? We only have to avoid taking positions that would associate us with a military alliance. That’s because despite being neutral, it didn’t stop our country from signing a secret agreement with North Korea back in 1983. We can’t just do something of that sort without offering the same degree of latitude to other countries. What we must do is adjust our neutrality to new models, such as Ireland, Sweden and Finland. They are all in the EU and we should follow their example.”
There was of course, one important figure in the reactivation of the PfP application: Richard Cachia Caruana, whose direct experience in the EU communicated back to government that Malta was being kept out of important working councils on security. I ask Borg what his relationship is with RCC, the eminence grise of the Nationalist Party. Is he answerable to the minister, like any other ambassador, or does Borg have a tough time reining him in?
“He is answerable to me like all ambassadors, but if you ask me, you need someone good, like Richard, up there in Brussels. We communicate practically every day on European affairs. His team of some 60 lawyers up there is needed because they are following working sessions in which law and policy gets hammered out. It gives us as a government a certain strength, as was the case when we made our voice heard on the harmonization of the recognition of divorce laws by the courts, or the bluefin tuna quota. If we didn’t have these people up there, the damage would be great, because we wouldn’t be present for these working groups, the different council formations, and therefore we wouldn’t be able to influence the way EU law gets done.”
But don’t you find it unacceptable that someone like Cachia Caruana refuses to be interviewed, as the man in Brussels who represents Malta in the European Council?
“Well, I am elected by the people and I am obliged to give interviews. It is the politicians who defend the government’s position,” Borg says, letting Cachia Caruana’s brusque attitude towards the press easily off the hook. It’s not like this is the Abkhazian consul – it’s the perm rep to the EU, and also somebody who sits on the Cabinet.
“He does not sit on the Cabinet by right, but only when the Prime Minister invites him to attend. Only ministers sit on the Cabinet by right. It’s not like the GWU’s position back in Labour’s time,” Borg says.
I ask Borg whether he will concede that Cachia Caruana’s choice of the €21 million Dar Malta was not “a good investment” now that the government is literally struggling to rent out four commercial storeys beneath the swanky offices that face the European Commission on Rue Archimede.
“Before becoming foreign minister, we amended the laws so as to able to hasten the renting process by not requiring a call for tenders before choosing someone to rent any part of the property,” Borg says. But he says little else of the office that costs €4 million a year to run. “I think things will turn out well, now that we have no need to issue a tender…”
Without any commercial rent coming in for the disused space at Dar Malta (literally a waste of space), it stands to reason that Borg plans to rationalise the whole geography of Malta’s diplomatic span. One way has been to move the Slovakian embassy into that in Vienna, but also to close down the Scandinavian general embassy in Copenhagen. Instead Borg says he wants to open an embassy in Warsaw, while the next embassy in Ramallah and Tel Aviv will be jointly run with Cyprus, “so we’ll be paying half the rent.”
And even the visa process in Russia and China will be outsourced to a private company that will be processing the applications on Malta’s behalf. “It’s free since the company gets its payment from the applicants,” Borg says, as I remind him of the Beijing incident where the embassy was issuing visas indiscriminately to students who would use Malta as a bridge for illegal immigration into Europe.
“Chinese tourism to here did experience some decline, but we are trying to address the situation. We will be using the Spanish embassies in Serbia and Algeria to process visas, but this time by sending Maltese officials to do the work.”
Certainly, Borg has set himself a lofty ambition for his five-year programme: that of achieving an understanding on the exploration of oil with the countries which border the contentious continental shelf, namely Italy, Tunisia and Libya. Borg describes the three countries as “friends” and has so far offered the proposition of a joint exploration programme, an idea first cited by former minister Michael Frendo with Tunisia.
Breaking the 22-year-old impasse would be a coup for the minister.
“Now is the ideal time to come up with a formal understanding. Since Lockerbie, Libya has become more welcoming of the West, what with its relinquishing of any programme of weapons of mass destruction and the agreement it signed with Italy on immigration, it would be the time to actually decide what to do next. Are we going to spend our time prolonging this issue, or shall we come up with something concrete to break this stalemate? It’s a matter that takes time, but even going back to the International Court of Justice would take time in itself. You actually have to agree beforehand to go to the ICJ.”
I ask Borg, now that he will be meeting his Italian and Libyan counterparts on 5 December in Malta, how he views Libya’s role in the so called “fight” against illegal immigration.
“The scope of this meeting is to see how Frontex can be used to patrol the Mediterranean more effectively and hopefully, get Malta to achieve an understanding between the three countries while involving Libya for the first time ever.
“Libya is also understandably demanding help to patrol its own border south of the desert, because it is a country of transit for migrants. I expect that they will bring this issue up, considering that in their Italian agreement there is mention of surveillance for the 7,000km desert border.”
Critics of such fortress tactics know this vision all too well: southern European states pushing the rejection ring further down below, to stop migrants from crossing into Libya before being able to reach the Mediterranean, even if these might have bona fide claims for international protection.
“The fact is that if someone wants to come to Europe they are ready to die trying anyway,” Borg says, somewhat matter-of-factly. “It will keep on happening. But if you can control it, there can be no argument to be made against protecting your own border.”
The fatalism of the argument floors me, somehow shedding light on the amount of money that gets wasted on frontier security rather than development aid. But can he describe Frontex as having even made a difference to the migration patterns across the Mediterranean, especially after its own executive director Ilkka Laitenen branded it a failure?
“Frontex does, for the fuel of Maltese patrol boats,” Borg starts off, makig it sound almost like the most redeeming factor of the European Union’s coastguard-of-sorts. “The reason it isn’t more effective is because there is no Libyan cooperation. If you have no faculty of turning boats back to Libya, then it’s weak. I was always in favour of Frontex – the fact that Spain, German, France and Greece come together to help us, also allows us to show them the problem we face. Surely it isn’t the deterrent we only want, because at least there is its life-saving aspect.”
I challenge Borg on Frontex. At best, it’s the most disjointed of European missions ever. The pooling of resources depends upon the voluntary will of member states, by Laitenen’s own admission it is not a search-and-rescue mission, and different armies operate with different standards on the high seas.
“The only problem I see with Frontex is that it could have more countries participating. But if we discontinue it, wouldn’t we be sending the wrong message to the human traffickers? I thought Laitenen’s comments were rather unhappy, especially when he said that Frontex was a pull factor. Over this summer for example, you have to keep in mind the Somalian exodus due to the state of lawlessness there.”
But what about differing standards of behaviour on Frontex missions: the Germans have been found to have confiscated fuel and supplies on the high seas outside the Libyan territorial waters, to force migrants back to the coast.
“Well that’s something the Maltese army has never done,” Borg says. “That endangers lives. Yes, it’s true there are different methods adopted by the armies, and we don’t have control over it.”
While concentrating on helping Libya control its desert border, don’t you make it known to Libya that its non-adherence to the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees is unacceptable to you?
“I wish Libya was a Convention signatory,” Borg says. “And there have been efforts to get Libya to become a signatory. But I don’t see anything wrong in sending anyone back to Libya if they are a rejected asylum seeker, if they originated from there,” Borg says, referring to the protestations against sending migrants back to Libya, whose human rights record in the field is notorious.
The flipside to the immigration debate may as well be Malta’s alleged commitment to the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which in practical terms should be translating to an overall donation of aid to developing countries of 0.17% of gross national income by 2010. Malta has been accused of factoring in its spending on refugees and asylum seekers over here in its overall spend, rather than saying what money actually goes out of the country and into countries in Africa.
Borg says he is reforming the rules of ODA and this year he is earmarking €330,000 via NGOs applying for the funds. While busy with the fight against migration from Africa, he will be publishing a booklet of the ODA projects in 18 months’ time, he says. The emphasis he says is on poverty reduction.
“Our experts say it is permissible to include spending on refugees in our ODA but it is true we have to shift money to projects focusing on poverty eradication and capital projects. Of course, if we get Palestinian police officers training in Malta, who then go back home with the skills they have learnt, we count that as development aid. But I have given my word to NGOs and I am emphasizing that money spent will be on capital projects aimed at poverty eradication.”

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