Parliamentary Diplomacy

Heading a delegation, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Malta, Dr. Angelo Farrugia has paid a recent visit to Budapest this April. Diplomacy&Trade has caught up with him to discuss bilateral and European issues like economic relations, parliamentary diplomacy or the tackling of migration.

The delegation of the Maltese House of Representatives arrived in Hungary at a parliamentary initiative that goes back before the new coronavirus epidemic. “We had a lot of issues to discuss at this delayed visit. It was of paramount importance that we talked about bilateral relations between the two parliaments. We discussed issues with the speaker of Hungarian parliament as well as with former and current ministers with special regard to our approach to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and to our role as parliamentarians in order to ensure that we move to the right direction and do the right thing to work for peace,” the Speaker explained.

A busy decade
Dr. Angelo Farrugia was elected as Speaker of the House of Representatives of Malta ten years ago. He pointed out that this decade was very important for the Maltese parliament. “One of my highlights was that we managed to go from a parliament mainly dependent on the government of the day to a parliament, which became fully autonomous. Of course, we also had other changes, which regards, for example, to parliamentary committees where we started with four and now, we have 17 of them, so we now cover practically all areas that particular committees discuss and then are carried forward to the plenary session.”
In 2016, Dr. Farrugia was elected as president of the Commonwealth countries that have a population of one million or less and served in that position until 2019. In fact, it was him who wrote the first constitution of this group of just over 50 states. He also commissioned the Institute for Climate Change & Sustainable Development at the University of Malta to fight climate change in which Maltese parliament had a paramount role by organizing the first climate change conference with the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) for small countries.

Encouraging figures
Last year, the Maltese Minister for Tourism, Clayton Bartolo was in Budapest and told Diplomacy&Trade that "Malta is open for business" in various senses of the word after the pandemic. In reaction to that, the parliamentary speaker first mentioned, with regard to economic relations between Malta and Hungary, the growing number of Maltese investments here like the Corinthia Hotel Budapest, private healthcare institutions like the St. James Hospital or companies like the OZO Group. “We have students who come here to study veterinary and other subjects and we have a lot of Hungarian nationals working in Malta. It has been very positive that we now have over six direct flights a week from Budapest to Valetta and return. The tourism figures are also very encouraging. The annual number of Hungarian tourists who used to come to Malta before the new coronavirus epidemic was about 6,000+. Now, we already surpassed that number last year and between January and March this year, we already reached 6,000. Also, the number of students who come to Malta to study English in language schools is on the rise again. So, all in all, the results are very encouraging.”

Tackling migration
Given its geographical location, Malta is very much exposed to the flow of migrants from North Africa. When these people cross the Mediterranean Sea, the nearest place for them to reach Europe is Malta or the Italian island of Lampedusa. Dr. Farrugia reiterated that this issue is not just Malta’s problem, it is a European problem. “It's really something that nobody can understand after all these years: why don't we have a common collective policy on migration, why Europe had not managed to embark on a strong strategic immigration policy? That is, we have to define exactly who has the right to be allowed to be treated like a regular migrant and who has not. It's a humanitarian issue and we have a lot of conventions to abide by: the Geneva Convention, the Dublin convention and the European Convention on Human Rights.” He added that, on top of all this, it should also be discussed whether the issue of human traffickers is being properly addressed by the European Union. “If human traffickers have a free hand, they can do whatever they like – this is something that Europeans have to revisit. It's an issue of values and a strategic maneuver is necessary how to tackle this migration. Again, it's not a question of Malta, it's a question for the European Union to understand each other, go back to basics and address the problem.” As for the most immediate measure to be taken, he suggested that it should be made sure on an EU level that NGOs involved in this matter are really honest, and they have the proper credentials to help those in need. A resolute policy passed and implemented by the EU could address problems like traffickers transporting people from inside Africa by plane to the north of the continent, that is, to Libya and neighboring countries and then organize their movement across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Common foreign and security policy needed
Malta is a small country, in fact, the smallest member of the European Union, but it does not mean that its contribution to the EU community of countries is negligible. “The fact that we are small doesn't mean that we do shouldn't have a voice. Actually, one thing that I spoke about with the speaker of Hungarian Parliament is that we should contribute more in the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs (COSAC), where all the national parliaments can meet and then whatever they decide could go straight to the European Commission. It's interesting that we see now the follow-up of the European Conference on the Future of Europe, where there are a lot of recommendations, but some of these, I believe, are negative recommendations like the one that we should go from unanimity to qualified majority in decision-making. That would mean that the voice of such countries as Malta – and also Hungary that is not a small country but it's not a big country like France, either – becomes negligible because it can be overruled by a qualified majority. So, yes, we have to keep on struggling and make sure that we have a workable system: we have to revisit our values, we have to revisit our way of doing things, and also, we have to have a common foreign and security policy that the European Union doesn't have now. The latter means that we are weakening ourselves if we don't have a common foreign executive policy,” the Speaker of the Maltese House of Representatives concluded.