European Council President Donald Tusk in Malta last night. Photos: Matthew Mirabelli

No country and no continent on their own are able to address the challenges arising from the immigration phenomenon, the House of Representatives heard the presidents of the European Council and Parliament say yesterday.

The speeches by Donald Tusk and Martin Schultz were the curtain raiser for the Valletta Summit on Migration taking place today and tomorrow, attended by leaders from the EU and Africa.

Prime Minister Joseph Muscat told Parliament that, although the summit did not aspire to be the solution to all the problems, it promised to be the first significant step for the two continents to collaborate on the shared challenges within the context of shared values.

Mr Tusk described Malta as a fitting place to meet and start addressing the migration challenge through a rekindled partnership between Europe and Africa.

These efforts were marked by a number of complex challenges, he said, including the expected doubling of the African population over the next 35 years, climate change, urbanisation, social inequalities and geopolitical developments, including the Middle East instabilities.

We should fight the traffickers, but never the immigrants

The European involvement needed to give meaningful socio-economic opportunities to African citizens. The EU should offer more space to African students and fund more training programmes in African countries, while the new European Emergency Fund should help offer the people of Africa a better future.

“We have come here to become better and closer neighbours,” he said. Europe and Africa would set out a roadmap to put meat on agreed principles.

Security and sustainable development were shared European and African rights.

“This summit is about action.”

President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, centre, soon after arriving in Malta last night.

Mr Schultz said Malta, during the current “morally testing period”, was a testament to the beauty of the mingling of cultures and peoples. The country, he said, was a successful and unique melting pot of Mediterranean routes which led a barren rock to develop into a prosperous society.

However he warned that the people’s concerns should not be waved off by naïve idealism. Governments should stop patching up with short-term solutions and start investing in development, promoting good governance, introducing legal migration opportunities and forging joint repatriation solutions.

“We should fight the traffickers, but never the immigrants,” Mr Schultz said.

In his own speech, Dr Muscat saw the summit as possibly a historical opportunity to contribute towards global solutions to a global problem, in saving lives, granting asylum where required, repatriating, securing borders and contributing to tackling the root causes of migration.

After explaining recent Maltese economic and social developments, he dwelt on two aspects of the EU’s future.

It would be a mistake to ignore the people’s concerns

The EU, he said, should actively encourage member states to build stronger economic and political links with the emerging world economic leaders.

Within the context of the upcoming debate about the UK’s request for EU reforms, Dr Muscat shared the view that reforms were necessary. Member states should develop an ever closer union without becoming a single country, respecting fundamental freedoms and national competencies, including in the fiscal sector.

The Leader of the Opposition, Simon Busuttil, called the summit an opportunity to tackle the challenge together and leave behind “globalised indifference”.

“We knew that Malta on its own is too small; we discovered that even Germany is too small on its own,” he said. People were rightly disappointed because they faced indifference and were left alone when facing the arrival of many more immigrants than they could handle, said Dr Busuttil. People were considering the EU as absent from their daily concerns.

“It would be a mistake to ignore the people’s concerns, or to consider all those who raise concerns as being xenophobes and racist. Unless we speak up, unless we act, it would be those who are truly racist or populist who will speak up.”

Migration was an issue which no single country could tackle on its own. The only way forward was collective action. This was what the European ‘Union’ was all about, Dr Busuttil said.

Opening the session yesterday, Speaker Anġlu Farrugia recalled Malta’s contribution to major political developments including the end of the Cold War in 1989.