Illegal immigrants: a challenge for the EU

The newspaper hails the fact that the Netherlands has agreed to take in about 30 illegal immigrants who were being held in detention centres on the island. This is "a great step forward in the resolution of a problem that has exercised the government and, indeed, the media, for more than a year now. Of primary importance in this unhappy business has been the vindication of the government's determination to place the complications and difficulties posed by asylum seekers and illegal immigrants squarely in a continental context. Malta, it has been argued, is too small, its population density already too high, to absorb anything but a minimal number of immigrants. The European Union needed to be persuaded that the situation that has developed over the past two years is more than just a local difficulty for the Maltese government to cope with. Asylum seeking and illegal immigration across the Mediterranean was a challenge that needed to be recognised by the EU." 

» more information (external link, English)
More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Malta

» To the complete press review of Wednesday, January 11, 2006