Missed Opportunities

Some two weeks ago, I attended a conference “Dialogues in the Western Mediterranean – Regions & Civil Society toward decentralized cooperation and participating democracy”. This took place in Genoa, Italy and was organised by the Commissione Europa, Rapresntanza in Italia and the Reggione Liguria.

It took place in the renovated old harbour. It is a marvellous lesson of how to preserve a harbour while renovating it to have new uses. Its success can be easily seen by the fact that it is estimated that over 3.8 million visitors come to share this experience each year. The conference hall was located in the old cotton stores.

The first part of the conference was dedicated to the usual speeches including a video link with the Italian Foreign Minister Scotti. Most of the speakers came from Liguria region – a region viewed by many as highly unsympathetic to immigration. I must admit this surprised me at first, since immigration, though not in the spotlight of the conference, was surely to feature. In fact, this issue featured in the background throughout the whole conference.

But I was surprised with the sensitivity shown by speakers, mostly Italians, to immigration. They pointed out to the large number of Italians who immigrated both to the USA and to South America when Italy was facing economic hardship. This point was made for example, by Alessandro Repetto, President of the Genoa Province when he mentioned that his grandparents were immigrants in the USA.

The second point that surprised me was that Genoa looks at the Mediterranean Sea as the platform of expansion to its wealth through trade. This is in contrast to us, Maltese, who disregard the Mediterranean and look to Central Europe. We continually complain that we are an island surrounded by the sea and cut off from continental Europe whereas the Genoese look at the Mediterranean as an opportunity. If we were entrepreneurial like the Genoese, we would continually use our strategic position in the Mediterranean, our Mediterranean culture and our Semitic language to enhance our economic well-being especially nurturing the contacts with the other Mediterranean countries.

The third point was the fact that Genoa’s businessmen look at North Africa as the latest opportunity for them to expand. The same can be said to the Universita’ di Genoa which through collaboration with North African universities are attracting North African students to its campus. Again, this contrasts with what happens locally. Instead of looking at the North African market for opportunities by exploiting our relative advantage, we tend to look at the European markets where we face huge relative disadvantages.

Unfortunately, I attended the workshop regarding culture and education. This was one of the worst workshops I ever attended. It was not the organisers’ fault. It was the participants who created a sense of negativity which dominated the whole workshop. There was a speech by Professor Aziz, from the Mediterranean Observatory, who emphasised the need to coordinate the projects between the Europe and the North African countries as the resources were limited. One of the Tunisian delegates then objected to the fact that there was no Arabic translation and continued to put forward the name of an Italian girl as rapporteur instead of the one chosen by the organisers. The Chair said that he did not find any objection even though a rapporteur was already selected. From then on, the meeting degenerated rapidly with everyone speaking his piece and without any effort to relate it either to what was said by other people or to the subject. Two Italian girls were the most violent in their speeches as they were notoriously uncompromising and also provocative. On the other hand, one could also see that the priorities of the northern bank of the Mediterranean are totally different from those of the south. This is in regard to NGOs.

Those from the North Africa had two basic needs – peace and liberty. They want peace in the Middle East and liberty at home. They cannot understand the EU. On the one hand, the EU invites them for such meetings to get a dialogue going. They see these meetings as an effort to find congruencies and set up new relations which are reciprocally acceptable to both sides. Yet, they see that the political agenda of the EU countries as already set in two important respects. The EU supports Israel most probably because of geopolitical reasons and because of its anti-Zionist past. Thus they see the European interests as simply building a bridge for economic reasons. The EU is also interested in maintaining stability in North Africa and thus is supporting the governments including those which do not promote democracy. This is usually effective under the pretext of subsidiarity and tends to link the problem of democracy in these countries to Islam.

This last point was reflected in the concluding session where a Tunisian female NGO representative asserted (like many others) that the problem is not Islam. Islam is not violent, antidemocratic or repressive. It is many of the governments supported by the EU that are. To understand this point, one has to think of the Roman Catholic Church. It is undemocratic in its structure and nature but can it be accused of fermenting the Catholic/Orange split in Northern Ireland simply because it is so? Can the Catholic Church be accused, as Islam is, as being violent? The same point concerns democracy. Though it is an antidemocratic institution, it does not mean that where one finds lack of democracy this can be attributed to the Catholic Church.

Two other points that came out of the conference were the fact that the Italians are doing their best to integrate the immigrants especially the second generation immigrants. Some were asking whether the time has arrived to grant electoral rights to immigrants. The second generation of immigrants, whether legal or not, presents us with a big problem and shows our short-sightedness as Maltese. This problem will haunt us in the future as we’re doing nothing about it.

The second was that the main problem with immigration is not terrorism, religion or intolerance but gross mutual ignorance on both sides. I believe that this is also the main problem in Malta. We don’t know anything about these immigrants while they do not know anything about us. I know that I am generalising, as some NGOs are working with these illegal immigrants and running programmes which try to inform these immigrants about the ways Western society is structured and run. Unfortunately, these courses are being run for those with refugee status and are waiting their turn to leave Malta either to the United States or to other European countries. Thus the benefit will not be reaped by us but by others.

I was the only person from Malta. I’m sure that others were invited but did not attend. I believe that we’re missing out on most important things. It is easy and useless to criticize the EU for lack of sensitivity to the problems that immigration presents to our country. We need to ask some serious questions like - What are we doing to understand the roots of the problem we’re facing and also to bring forward initiatives to deal with these problems in a practical, humane way?

The last observation is that many Maltese are sensitive that many nations are being successful in taking most of North African market. We tend to envy them and yet do nothing. The way forward to exploit the benefits of this market is to take the plunge into this market, establish and nurture all types of contacts. We simply cannot continue to miss out at the opportunities!