Author: Jacques René Zammit

Categories
Constitutional Development Corruption Panamagate

We ain’t seen nothing yet

One by one they walked out of Mile End HQ with that pathetic smile that convinces only themselves and the diehard faithfuls that all is well in the State of Labour. No comments to the assembled press though, at least not until PM Abela walked out of the glass door of the infamous Dar it-Trasparenza. Abela was, rightly, the one to face the music and give some kind of rendition of what had gone in the meeting.

Good news first. Mizzi has been voted out of the Labour Party. The man who has been unfit for purpose since at least the Panama Papers revelations is finally party-less and has been left to fend for his sorry self (while still in quarantine).

In other news, Abela is still playing to the circus that voted his party back into power notwithstanding the fact that many of the what he calls ‘allegations’ were known to them in 2017. The accolytes gathered around him for moral support included such luminaries as Edward Zammit Lewis and Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi and they were there to applaud and yell their support to make whatever happened that moment look and sound like a resounding victory.

Pressed and cornered to take a position about Joseph Muscat, Abela writhed and squirmed trying hard to build a case for not having ditched il-Kink along with the rest of the ballast. The biggest problem that Abela had was the elephant in the room : he could not say that Muscat deserved being ditched by Labour for the enormous responsibility that he has carried at the very least for standing by the Mizzi and Schembri Roadshow from the start.

He tried. He did say that had he been in Muscat’s place in 2016 he would have ditched Mizzi immediately. But Muscat’s responsibility goes further than that. It is a continuing responsibility borne by the fact that he stood square behind Mizzi and Schembri until yesterday. And here comes the elephant… that responsibility is carried by each and every member of the Labour governments who have stood square behind Muscat’s line of defences.

These are the Labour government and members who accused investigators and civil society of being traitors of the nation. They are the same members who backed Mizzi’s corrupt deals to a hilt. They are still unable to bring themselves to commit on a revision of every single contract and deal in which Mizzi was involved.

Abela today tried to get cheers for a non-achievement. His distraction biscuit today was that we would not be going to the polls any time soon (cue cheers and cries from the rent-a-crowd). The cries came from people who are just as tainted and just as mixed-up in this mess. As long as the collective responsibility for our nation’s current predicament is not borne then we continue living a lie.

As a friend of mine rightly noted earlier tonight: “Daphne Caruana Galizia would have still been alive today, had it not taken you ages to decide. Had our institutions been truly independent and allowed to function.”

That, Robert, is the reason we cannot have accolades and triumphalisms. You might convince yourself and your roadies that tonight’s vote is some big cut off moment. As far as we are concerned, we literally ain’t seen nothing yet.

photo: M. Mirabelli

Categories
Constitutional Development Mediawatch

Rajna f’Idejna

Writing in today’s Times of Malta controversial ex-politician Franco Debono discusses recent happenings in the field of constitutional reform. The article titled “The reforms we implement should be our own” concerns what Franco calls “the colonial mentality of having reforms imposed”. Constitutions and constitutional reforms must be autochthonous Debono tells us and not granted by a foreign sovereign.

What interests me today is the basic premise of Debono’s argument: that we are having reforms imposed on us by some foreign power or authority much in the same way we depended on sovereigns granting us constitutions in the past.

In simple terms, what Debono is advocating here is that any changes to our constitution must not be imposed from the outside but must come from within the country (“We the people”, presumably through the able hands of our representatives and their advisors). There is very little to criticize here: the sovereign constitutional power resides with the people who delegate their representatives (and specialists) to give legal shape to that power.

Debono does not stop there. He speaks of what he calls ‘the unfortunate and tragic circumstances in which the Venice Commission, a respected organ of the Council of Europe, was requested to make proposals about this country’s institutions two years ago”. After outlining what he terms the Commission’s ‘proposals’ he states the following:

Benefitting from the expertise of international bodies is one thing. But having fundamental structures extensively imposed on the country by external institutions is humiliating and marred by a bitter colonial taste, especially when those proposals have a local origin. Steering away from a colonial mentality towards a sentiment of national pride is the greatest reform that this country needs. The rest should follow.

The reforms we implement should be our own – Franco Debono

This is where Debono’s original premise falls flat. The implication is that the Venice Commission is imposing content on Malta, and that somehow the constitution of Malta has slipped from the sovereign hands of the people into the hands of foreign writers. M’ghadniex rajna f’idejna (we no longer have the reigns of our country in our hands). This jingoistic, nationalistic nerve that Debono is tapping fits conveniently in the current narrative of misplaced patriotism and anti-European sentiment.

The assertion of any imposition of the actual rules and laws and structures is false. This argument can be extended not only to the Venice Commission (an institution within the Council of Europe) but also to the Commission and Court of Justice of the European Union (institutions of the EU), both of which may be tasked to review the conformity of Malta’s laws and regulations with the rule of law.

Debono is ignoring the fact that such institutions are tasked with checking the standards of our laws and not their content. Every member state of the Council of Europe and European Union remains the sovereign master of its legal system. Member states are free to alter and draft their own laws as they deem fit but such laws are tested against standards which the very same member states have agreed to in their full, sovereign membership of international communities.

Think of this as a VRT test. You are free to purchase any car you choose and can tweak it to your liking so long as it conforms with the agreed standards for roadworthiness. A VRT tester does not impose a car on you but makes sure that your car is up to the standards everyone agrees to.

The Venice Commission will look at any suggested reform which the Maltese state makes. It will do so using a standard measure that is the rule of law. Should any of the measures fail to fit that standard the Venice Commission will make that known. The same goes for potential cases before the ECJ. As the Polish government found out recently, every Stateis free to change its system of appointment of judiciary – so long as that system guarantees an observance of the basic tenets of the rule of law.

Being held to certain standards is not the same as being forced to accept laws that are not ours. The standards are standards established for our own good and which we, as a sovereign nation member of international communities, adhered to. Our laws must be safe. Safe for us, the citizens who abide by them.

At the heart of such standards is the interest of “We the people” who are protected by their application. Far from being an imposition, it is an international guideline of democratic standards that we are being asked to conform to.

Given what Franco calls the “unfortunate and tragic circumstances” into which our country was dragged, the fact that the abusers of our constitution and law for so long are now being set to a higher standard when tinkering with the laws is a small but worthy consolation.

The only colonial mentality of submission would be to allow those who have held our constitutional rights hostage for too long in the name of a party duopoly to dupe us into thinking that conforming to the right standards is some blow to our national pride.

Categories
Values

Braying Donkeys and Hyenas

The Maltese have a saying ; “Ħanqa/naħqa ta’ ħmar qatt ma telgħet is-sema”. (A donkey’s braying never reached the sky). I never quite put my finger on what exactly we are to learn from this proverb and normally put it down to mean that the noises some individuals make are best ignored because of their emptiness.

I am reminded of the saying every time I come across posts by that sans pareil of Maltese wankellectualism Mario Azzopardi. It is not just now that he is steeped in controversy for his latest base brainfart attacking Roberta Metsola – it is practically always. The energumen has styled himself as some sort of facebook demagogue riding the filthy waves of jingoistic patriotism, unbridled racism and collective bigotry. His appeals are followed by a herd of like-minded individuals whose common lineage is found in the perverted interpretation of civil society that has prevailed in the age of TaghnaLkolllism.

Just before his tirade against Metsola, on St. George’s day, this latest version Malta’s illuminati had written his own appreciation of what politics is about:

He’d rather have a son of a bitch in power than a floppy romantic ‘saint’. Poor old Macchiavelli gets drawn into this Manual of the Political Warrior as Pilate in the creed. Were it a politician talking you might even salute the bold assertiveness of the position being taken. Black on white it is there. This is no politician though. This rabble rouser is a leech on the public purse – one of the many who enjoyed the patronage of Muscat’s Aqwa Zmien… one of the few for whom this was really a golden age.

Metsola rightly did not stoop to the levels of this hyena (far from sharks Mario, far from sharks) of the political jungle. Her reply to his ridiculous tirade was exemplary:

Yes, because lessons on what politics should be about are not to be taken from hyenas scavenging for some prize but from those who work hard for the common good. Incidentally it will not go unnoticed that the hyena’s efforts are part of a concerted effort encouraged daily by the authorities in power. Internet bullying and rabble rousing remains the order of the day as a long list of insignificant politicians and pseudo-politicians attempt to harness the anger of a misinformed population.

It is with the weapon of information that the hyenas and donkeys of this world will be finally relegated to the dust heap of irrelevance where they belong.

Categories
Environment

Fuck You Dolphins

We’ve been so happy spotting dolphins all over the island. Clips of the cetaceans zipping contentedly over and under waves have been shared again and again and have also made the news – to the point of getting an archbishop’s blessing. Some experts (we still have some somewhere) told us that this was because there was less noise underwater so the dolphins will come and play closer to the shores.

You barely have the time to enjoy the extra adrenaline rush from this newfound moment of natural goodness that a Minister will come along and spoil the show. Minister Farrugia’s little brownie badge acquired for his new plans for petrol stations had just about found place on his inflated chest when he came up with this blooper: Rubble could be dumped in the sea as a short-term solution, Environment Minister Aaron Farrugia has suggested as the roadworks projects in the country remain at a standstill.

The roadworks in Lija – one of the many asphalt laying projects of the Government of the Best – are at an unacceptable standstill and this because the debris created by said project can find no place to call home. Funnily enough it is actually a question of money since the problem seems to be a disagreement on the price per tonne that has to be paid to quarry owners to accept the debris. I say funnily enough because this government has given us a simple modus operandi of throwing millions of euro at preferred customers in the private sector in order to solve its problems.

It seems however that while our elders may be dumped and crammed into a hotel at exorbitant prices in order to fill the huge gap of inadequate hospital and care facilities (1.6 million euros to Downtown Hotel), while direct orders for illegal batching plants may be the run of the day… while all of this is possible, the quarry owner’s demands are not feasible.

Nope. In this case our option is to take the debris and DUMP IT IN THE SEA. Apparently it is ok because the Nationalists (remember them?) have done it before when building Smart City. There HAD to be a precedent didn’t there Aaron? Because now it will be ok if you go on and proceed to dump debris in the sea in accordance with whatever sick law you lot conjectured together in parliament.

This is the government that often toys with the Gozitan community by proposing to build a tunnel between the islands. I’d love to see that. Really. I wonder where they would plan to put all that debris. In the sea right?

Aaron Farrugia and his hobz-biz-zejt eating half-brained colleague Ian Borg can both stick their heads far up where the sun does not shine (while we’re at it that pea brained excuse for a human Clint Camilleri can join them). Their love of asphalt and development (and hunting) is seriously prejudicing whatever is left of our islands.

Their big fuck you to dolphins today is another nail in the coffin of our environment.

Categories
Rule of Law

The Lies that Bind Us

Tander and Lying

Alex Agius Saliba (Tander) Labour MEP and member of the S&D group is a liar. More specifically Alex Tander Saliba is lying about what happened in the European Parliament on Thursday 17th when the parliament voted on a resolution entitled “EU coordinated action to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences“. The controversy drummed up at EU level has been taken to a different level in Malta thanks to the immigration controversy that is vying with COVID for top heading in the news.

Ironically this gives us the opportunity have a detailed look at what happening on both fronts: immigration and COVID. Along the way it allows us to dispel several untruths that are being fed through a ghastly government spin that feeds on populism, nationalism and sovreignist claims with a heavy dose of EU skepticism and mistrust. This fomenting of public sentiment has proven a welcome distraction for politicians from all sides unable to lift themselves out of the mire of abject incompetence.

Let us look therefore at what happened in Brussels last week and while we are at it we may understand the wider dynamics of European and national politics in times of COVID. I will take advantage of our semi-lockdown situation by assuming that a long read is a welcome time-filler these days.

A resolution of sorts

What was the vote about on Friday? Resolution RC-B9-0143/2020 is titled, as we have seen, “EU Coordinated action to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences”. Let us step back for a moment and see WHO is resolving before we see the WHAT. This is the European Parliament (EP) – the institution of the EU made up of directly elected members from all the states. Compared to the Council (made up of Member State government representatives) it is the more ‘Europeanist’ of institutions – acting in the interest of the European Project.

The vote was for a resolution: less legal as an instrument and more political or diplomatic if you like. While the EP can and does have a role in law making in the EU (it has a direct role in the making of regulations and directives) it can also use the instrument of “resolutions”. EP resolutions are non-binding which means that they have no legal force and are often used in areas where the EU has no formal competence but where the EP would like to push a certain agenda. So that is a first point to be made: this was a non-binding resolution by the EP on a specific issue.

Wake up EU! The EP Alarum!

Now to the subject matter of the resolution. The EU is not passing through a good patch. The COVID pandemic has exposed huge faults in the European project and is severely testing the will of its parts. Landmark events in the previous decade or so seemed to point to a project that had gone off the rails as the original inspiration from the European forefathers began to lose its shine. There was no longer any appeal in the pooling of resources nor in the deepening of cooperation.

Migratory pressures had piled upon economic differences and the COVID pandemic brought out the worst of the worst. It can be summed up simply: there was no longer a team Europe. From the start the reactions were anything but coordinated. Ironically at the early stage of the spread on the continent, even the EU institutions were distracted by an immigration problem: Turkey’s Erdogan was pulling all the stops to wreak havoc and blackmail the Union by unleashing thousands of migrants at its borders.

So by the time we were knee deep in pandemic-mode the States had engaged in a free for all DIY approach – to each his own. If this was not bad enough, we also had to deal with the fact that the EU barely had any competence in terms of healthcare provision. As the state of affairs worsened in State after State part of the blame was put on the EU. What can the EU do for us?

The opening considerations of the EP resolution include an admission that “the EU response to the COVID-19 pandemic has so far been marked by a lack of coordination between Member States in terms of public health measures, including restrictions on the movement of people within and across borders and the suspension of other rights and laws; whereas with our economy having been put on hold, the effects of the ensuing disruption on European citizens, businesses, workers and the self‑employed will be dramatic”.

Why is the EP ‘admitting’ this? Well, in part it is not an admission but an admonition. The lack of coordination between Member States is no fault of the EU institutions but rather a result of the will of the Member States themselves. This resolution, based on the values of solidarity and economic, social and territorial cohesion is an attempt to urge the MS out of this lack of collaboration.

The EP resolution is a reminder of the duty of solidarity to Member States and also a reminder to the European Council to get a move on concerning economic measures to deal with the crises. This resolution is an answer to all those who have been asking where the EU has been in all this time. The EP is taking the lead in urging the Member States back in line and away from their knee-jerk populist go-it-alone reactions.

L. whereas this is a moment of truth for the Union that will determine its future and that can only pull through this crisis if Member States and European institutions stand together in solidarity and responsibility, and when a strong and united voice of the European Parliament is needed more than ever;

Preamble of the resolution

The resolution itself reads as a summary of what has happened till now and what should be done when moving forward. There is the collective admission of failure to act collectively and a rallying call to turn this around in order to fulfill the Union’s mission of helping the most vulnerable and those who are suffering most as a result of the pandemic. These include the elderly, the sick, those in conflict-afflicted areas and areas prone to natural disasters, the migrants and those who are exposed to domestic violence – especially women and children.

Contrary to what people like Alex Tander would have us believe this is not a resolution about immigration. It is a resolution about COVID and how the Member States should be working together.

Is concerned by Member States’ initial inability to act collectively and demand all future actions taken by Member States to be guided by the Union’s founding principle of solidarity and loyal cooperation; believes that the COVID-19 crisis has shown above all the importance of joint European action; stresses that the Union and its Member States have the common resources to fight the pandemic and its consequences, but only when cooperating in a spirit of unity; recognises that Member States, having acted unilaterally at the beginning of the crisis, now understand that cooperation, confidence and solidarity are the only way to overcome this crisis;

Point 5 of the resolution

Calls on the Commission and the Member States to act together and to rise to the challenge and ensure that the Union emerges stronger from this crisis; stresses that Parliament will cooperate with the other EU institutions to save lives, protect jobs and businesses, and drive economic and social recovery and that it will stand ready to hold them accountable for their actions;

Point 6 of the resolution

Action Plan

The 14 page document is practically a to-do list for all actors in the EU system – from Council to Commission to Parliament to the Member States – to be able to do their part and work together during the crisis. There is a part concerning “European solidarity and action in the health sector” urging different measures in this area of weak central competence.

The section concerning “European solutions to overcoming economic and social consequences” tackles the economic dimension of the crisis with a step by step account of what should be done at different sectors and what injections the EU can provide.

The next section concerns “Protecting democracy, rule of law and fundamental rights“. Much of this part reads as a reminder of the duty and obligation of Member States to respect fundamental rights and the rule of law even in times of crises when they may be tempted to put these rights in abeyance for ‘public safety concerns’.

The message is simple: Yes, we may have a pandemic on our hands but this is no excuse to trample on fundamental rights and backslide on the rule of law. Temporary suspension of certain treaty rights (Such as free movement) must be necessary, coordinated and proportionate. Interestingly the section on sexual and reproductive health rights attracted no controversy from the Maltese MEPs even if it would have been easy fodder any other day.

Calls on the Member States to effectively guarantee safe and timely access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and the necessary healthcare services for all women and girls during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially access to contraception, including emergency contraception, and to abortion care; strongly rejects any attempts to backtrack on SRHR and LGBTI rights, and in this context condemns the attempts to further criminalise abortion care, stigmatise HIV positive people, and undermine young people’s access to sexuality education in Poland, as well as the attack on transgender and intersex people’s rights in Hungary;

Point 48 of the resolution

Point 50 of the approved resolution is where Tander’s lies begin. The final approved point reads as follows:

Calls for full respect of the Geneva Convention and European asylum law; points out that provisions have to be made for the reception of new asylum seekers in appropriate sanitary conditions and medical support, and therefore expresses its deep concern at the situation of refugees and asylum-seekers arriving at the Greek islands, and in hotspots and detention centres, who do not have access to adequate health care and who are particularly at risk; considers that necessary solutions, including the preventive evacuation and relocation of the population at high risk, must be found to ensure the appropriate material conditions and social distancing to avoid contamination; stresses the important contribution of many migrants and descendants of migrants who are working to ensure the proper functioning of many essential sectors across the EU, and in particular in health and care sectors;

Point 50 of the Resolution

Hot isn’t it? Hal Far anyone? Still. This is not what got Saliba’s tits in a twist. We have to look at a motion for amendment that ultimately did not pass. Basically before the text that I am quoting from (the Final Resolution) passed, the EP got to vote on a list of motions for amendment. Essentially these are suggested changes to the text that might add to the overall shape of the resolution. Saliba’s Mendacious accounts relate to one particular amendment that was suggested. Amendment 52:

Obey the Law: Amendment 52

So here is the text of the amendment that got Saliba’s patriotic balls into hyperdrive:

39a. Calls on Member States to abide by their obligation under international
law to assist ships in distress and provide a place for disembarkation for people who have been saved at sea, including by civil society boats and merchant vessels; recalls that solutions should be found to protect the lives and health of both the people in distress at sea and the people on land;

Amendment 52 to the Resolution (failed to pass)

It’s not a complicated amendment is it? This would have been a paragraph inserted before what would eventually become Point 50 quoted above. You do not need a law degree to understand the import of this amendment. The EP would be calling upon Member States to abide by their international law obligations. That is laws that ALREADY EXIST and obligations that are ALREADY IN PLACE. The EP is not inventing the wheel. It is not saying anything new. The obligations EXIST. The amendment would be a timely reminder in context just in case some hypothetical government decides that the COVID pandemic is a good enough excuse to renege on these obligations and allow people to die at sea. Hypothetically of course.

What does Tander (doctor of laws) understand of all this? Well, his reading of the paragraph includes these pearls of wisdom:

“Emenda illi b’mod dirett kienet se taffettwa lil pajjizana b’mod dirett. … L-emenda kienet tghid (ghalkemm ma ssemmix lil pajjizna b’mod dirett) illi pajjizna f’dawn iz-zminijiet ta’ emergenza sanitarja ghadnu jispicca centru ta’ salvatagg f’nofs il-Mediterran.”
“An amendment that would effect our country directly. The amendment said (Without mentioning our country directly) that in these difficult times of a health emergency our country would have to become a Salvage Centre in the Middle of the Mediterranean Sea.”

“ahna inkunu mgieghla illi naccettaw f’pajjizna bejn seba’ mitt elf u miljun immigrant irregolari illi bhalissa dawn jinstabu fuq ix-xtajta tal-Libja lesti sabiex jaghmlu t-tragitt taghhom u jidhlu fl-Ewropa”
“We will be forced to accept into our country between 700,000 and 1 million immigrants who are currently on the shores of Libya ready to start their trip into Europe”.

Tander’s Wisdom

Now before I go on to explain how far down the rabbit hole Tander’s interpretation is, let us look at the voting results that shot down the amendment. 299 MEPs voted in favour of the amendment. That included almost all of the Socialist Group of which Tander forms part. Almost because Tander was among the 369 who voted against. The only S&D member to do so in fact. There were 29 abstentions and these included 3 S&D members among which were Labour’s Cutajar and Sant. Miriam Dalli was the only Maltese MEP to vote in favour since the PN MEPs voted along PPE lines with Comrade Berlusconi. More on those later.

Back to Tander’s outrageous claims. It is obvious why he is taking his stand. He claims it himself in the video he circulated on facebook trumpeting his vote. He is aligning himself with PM Abela and Varist the confessor who have gone into spinning overdrive concerning the ‘tough decision’ that ‘ic-ckejkna Malta’ (Little Malta) had to take when allowing people to die at sea. The Malta First claims come out in all its force and the tune that is music to the ears of the patriotic, populist bunch of energumens that are the worst plague of the island will continue to be sung in this manner.

Tander can and will get away with these claims to the point that now even Miriam Dalli has become the target of the populist wave for having dared to vote in favour of what after all would have been a relatively innocuous addition to the resolution. The situation in Malta is such that the false lines on NGO collaborators of people traffickers have been fanning the flames long enough to have become true. The migrant devil is shot down via the messenger – the chimera of mafia driven NGOs who run the “civil society boats” mentioned in the abandoned amendment.

Sadly for Tander anyone intelligent and patient enough to read the resolution will be able to see through his hypocritical statements and lies. He portrays himself as some hero who saved Malta from an obligation to take on a flotilla of immigrants ready to evacuate the shores of Libya tomorrow. Did he for one second even imagine how many dinghies or boats are necessary to carry that amount of immigrants if it were true? What kind of buffoon comes up with this shit?

He may have a degree in law but I doubt whether he has ever had to use it. The international laws referred to in the amendment did not vanish away once the amendment was defeated (with a little help from the EPP and those schizophrenic Nationalist Party MEPs). The obligation to save lives in distress remains. Not only that but the rest of the resolution, as we have seen, includes references to other duties towards migrants already held in detention centres. Tander missed those.

The end of the beginning

We are far from the end of the COVID crisis. Resolutions such as this one are welcome signs of that the heart of Europe is ticking notwithstanding the reticence of its limbs to play their part. The puerile attempt by the likes of Tander to turn a national problem into an anti-EU crusade should be easily unmasked. Sadly the spin and speed of fake news and fake information is doing its part to undermine any efforts of revival of the European project.

We can only vow to soldier on. Fighting lies with facts and exposing the charlatans for what they really are. Next one on the list: Varist the Confessor. That’s all for now.

Good night and good luck.

Categories
COVID-19 Environment Immigration Politics

The Foreign Legion

There’s no two ways about this. Tackling the effects of the coronavirus pandemic requires a particularly well-honed toolset that is fully integrated with the global realities of today’s world. The by-now standard reaction in any nation wanting to brace itself and mitigate the impact of the virus is the dreaded lockdown.

The nature of the lockdown – a standstill of day to day life as families are confined to their living quarters and only the most essential of commerce is available – can be widely misinterpreted. Since part of the lockdown entails a shutting down of borders; and since the transmission of the infection is identified with travel, movement of persons and importation, the mover, the border, the foreign is rapidly becoming the enemy.

We are living in unprecedented times of Global War. This World War III is cross species. Homo sapiens vs COVID-19. Unfortunately the misinterpretation that I spoke of above means that across the globe governments and people are confusing persons on our side of the war with the enemy.

The foreigner becomes the suspect carrier, promoter and deliverer of the deathly virus kiss. Short-sighted, knee-jerk, populist reactions fail to factor in that the foreigner on ‘our’ land is part of the army needed to fight in the trenches.

Boris Johnson and Donald Trump ‘nationalised’ the reaction to the virus. Their politics built on the nostalgic pull of rekindling wartime memories of Greater America and Imperial UK could only produce the kind of nationalistic verve that was oblivious of international realities. In Little Malta we had a Minister whose name is not worth mentioning who openly declared that the first expendables would be the foreigners who had until very recently aided in the boosting of the market.

Yet the interdependent society that we had been in the process of building in fits and starts cannot suddenly be waved away with a magic wand. Nations like Luxembourg with 50% of the population ‘foreign’ by definition quickly realised that rather than kick out the non-natives, the nation depended on them. Vital sectors like the health sector ran on the transfrontalieres – cross-border commuters.

As soon as the borders threatened to shut the message from Luxembourg was an invitation to health workers to move their residence to the Duchy – even temporarily – in order not to let the health system collapse. The German Minister for Agriculture has already stated that the country would have to import manual labourers to work in the fields and prevent a food shortage.

However, there could be problems with the harvest in the fields, confirmed DBV President Rukwied. Of the approximately 286,000 seasonal workers who work in German fields every year, many come from abroad. According to Klöckner, their ministry is currently working on “workable solutions” to recruit the required workers. For example, workers from other sectors, such as catering, which are currently at a standstill, could be used. Temporary, flexible solutions will be worked out, such as relaxing the law on ‘mini-jobs’ or Sunday working. If not enough seasonal workers can be made available, they could also be flown in from abroad to cross closed borders, said the agriculture minister.

Source

The key to understanding this aspect of the Global Reaction to the epidemic is to understand that this is everybody’s war. The cliche’ that the virus knows no borders is not an excuse to build those walls that the populists had so desperately advocated for in pre-plague times. Rather it should lead to an understanding that there is no local answer to the problem – it has to be world wide.

And in these cases the foreign legion is that extra army that might help us cross the line at the end of the tunnel.