Bygones

As first European stop for many African immigrants, Malta risks being overwhelmed, writes Roland Flamini in a World Politics Watch Exclusive:

..Despite its size, the island looms large in European history because of its strategic position in the center of the Mediterranean. From Malta, a maritime power could dominate the whole expanse of water stretching from Gibraltar to Lebanon -- and a succession of such powers, including Britain and France, did.

Today, the geographic advantage has become something of a drawback. Malta has become the advance post of a major European problem: illegal immigration. Boat people from North Africa wash up on Malta's coastline at an alarming rate, some dead, some alive. A wave of desperate humanity from the Horn of Africa, Chad, Libya, Tunisia, and elsewhere find their way to the North African coast hoping to make the crossing to Europe in search of an often-mythical better life..

Of course, the immigrant problem would beset Malta whether it was an EU member or not. In other respects, Malta's membership has a logic all of its own. Strategically, having Malta as an EU member closes a window of vulnerability on the southern edge of Europe. If -- or perhaps when -- the European Union consolidates the idea of an independent security structure, the island could play a major role as a jumping off point for the planned rapid deployment force. (One snag: Malta currently declares itself strategically neutral.)

A small island that depends on tourism and some hi-tech industry as its economic mainstays is not likely to make a substantive material contribution to the European Union, but unlike some other newcomers -- for example, the divided island of Cyprus -- it doesn't come with any adverse baggage of problems. It also justifies itself with a European history going back to the Phoenicians and the Romans.

Ironically, a large part of that history was as the island fortress home of the Knights of Malta, a.k.a. the crusading Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem. The knights ruled Malta for nearly three centuries, until 1798. Their main reason for existence was, of course, to foil attempts to dominate the Mediterranean by their mortal enemies, the Turks. Malta, however, has been quite polite about Turkey's bid to join the European union. Again, bygones are bygones.

More articles by Roland Flamini, a former TIME magazine correspondent