While officials such as MEP Simon Busuttil criticised Frontex member states for reneging on their promises to supply military assets, the Maltese Armed Forces (AFM) themselves withheld their only pledged navy ship on more than one occasion.
And when it comes to the disembarkation of rescued migrants, the EU’s border control agency takes its decisions on a purely “ad hoc” basis, in a way that is “unsatisfactory” and “unsustainable” as far as the AFM are concerned.
These were among the many revelations made during a presentation in late November to the United Kingdom’s House of Lords, by AFM maritime squadron leader Major Andrew Mallia – who also earned lavish praise from the Chairman of the House for the clarity of his exhaustive testimony on the subject of international border control in the Mediterranean.
In a highly detailed assessment of the situation facing the Armed Forces on account of irregular immigration, Major Mallia outlined the basic difficulties and logistical problems faced by the maritime squadron during search and rescue operations. These can be summarised as a paucity of resources, complications arising from multinational involvements, and operational drawbacks in the present set-up of European instruments such as Frontex, among others.
At one point the Chairman of the House asked Mallia to comment on Dr Simon Busuttil’s complaint that Frontex participating countries had failed to honour pledges to provide military assets: in particular Italy, which according to the Maltese MEP had pledged 342 naval vessels that never materialised.
Mallia replied by admitting that Malta, too, had similarly failed to make available a navy ship after pledging it to Frontex. “A pledge does not mean: ‘I am giving you this asset and it will be there at a drop of a hat.’ It is saying, ‘I am making these resources available. Sometimes I will be able to participate; sometimes I will not’”, the AFM official told the House of Lords. “That has been the case, frankly, with Malta as well. We have pledged one of our largest vessels to the so-called ‘tool box’, as it was called at the time. We have deployed it on only one operation in Spain. There were other requests, but at the time we were so involved in national operations that it was beyond our means to deploy this vessel.”
Answering a separate question, Mallia also revealed that AFM planes are not equipped with satellite phones, and therefore cannot make direct contact with boats from the air.
Referring to the case last May when 57 Eritrean migrants went missing in the sea off Malta, Mallia explained: “Our current aircraft are not fitted with a satellite telephone – it is something we are trying to remedy at this time – so we did not have direct contact with the craft from the aeroplane.”

Unsatisfactory guidelines
While acknowledging that the Frontex border control agency was improving over time, Major Mallia was critical of the organisational set-up of the agency when it comes to certain aspects of rescue operations, in particular the disembarkation of migrants: a deeply sensitive point for Malta, which has so far refused to ratify the SOLAS and SAR Conventions specifically because of this issue.
“The question of guidance regarding disembarkation has so far been handled (by Frontex) on an ad hoc basis. For a particular joint operation the participating countries and the effective countries will sit down in a room, discuss the operational plan, which, among other things, will address this issue of disembarkation, and there will be some practical solution to it which is literally working at the lowest level.”
According to Mallia, this is far from an ideal situation: “It is not something which is based on a general principle. It was made very clear by all parties involved that it does not reflect a general position, it reflects an ad hoc arrangement. This obviously is not satisfactory for many of the Member States; it does not provide the stability which they want.”
Mallia added: “The ad hoc arrangements, while they generally work, are not sustainable. We cannot continue to make ad hoc arrangements for every operation.”
At the end of the session, the Chairman of Britain’s upper House of Parliament thanked the Maltese major for what he described as an “outstanding presentation”.
“I would like to say that I think many ministers I have known over many years in this House, at both ends of it, could well have taken advantage of sitting and listening to the way you have answered our questions.”

rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt