Promise of Partnership

The Malta Independent 

  

 

 

If someone were to tell you to think of something except a white horse you will inevitably think of a white horse.

 

This is what is happening to the government’s desperate attempts to tell us not even to think of Labour’s European Union partnership policy. The more the government argues that such a policy is unrealistic and presents no real alternative to membership, the more people are made to consider it as a more suitable alternative for our particular circumstances.

“ The argument of inevitability of EU membership, as the only way forward to have any meaningful relationship with the EU, is crumbling”

The argument of inevitability of EU membership, as the only way forward to have any meaningful relationship with the EU, is crumbling. Added to the way the funding argument has disappeared, the people, as they get closer to the referendum decision, are demonstrating reduced enthusiasm for the fashion of EU membership and are giving serious consideration to the realism of devising something more sensitive to our size and characteristics.

The EU itself, willingly or otherwise, is reinforcing the case for the feasibility of the partnership policy. The highest dose of credibility is coming from the Giscard d’Estaing convention. In their structure draft for the EU constitution that will replace all current treaties, the relationship based on a partnership model with countries that would not or cannot join in membership is clearly provided for.

But now Giscard d’Estaing has gone further. Speaking to the kangaroo group, a body that favours more stringent economic ties in Europe, including the application of fiscal decision making by qualified majority and no longer by unanimity, as the United Kingdom keeps insisting, Giscard d’Estaing declared that member countries that would not ratify the constitution which would be proposed would exclude themselves from the EU, but could have economic ties with the union.

He was quoted by The Financial Times as saying: “The probability is that of 25 or 27 countries, 23 would accept the constitution and two or three will refuse. We have to abrogate EU treaties that exist. If a country does not like the new treaty, there’s no existing structure for them to cling to, they cannot seek refuge in the old agreement.

“ The partnership option exists and it seems we could be in good company”

“We should say: you can maintain an economic role but you can no longer be in this political system. That will be the consequences of the refusal. Such countries would play a similar role to members of EFTA, which have a free trade area with the EU.”

It could not be clearer. We are about to join an EU that is changing all its rules so much that some of its existing members will probably opt-out and provision for such an exit is being made in the draft constitution. Should we really take this blind leap, inevitably leading to political absorption? Or should we be more prudent by seeking economic integration through free trade agreement and eventually deepening into other areas of economic co-operation in the freedoms in services, capital and people at a tempo which sustains our economic growth?

The partnership option exists and it seems we could be in good company. If the government insists on a referendum before or with a general election we will unavoidably be forced to apply partisan thinking on a national issue which needs to be taken soberly and only after exploring all options. The now or never symptom is extremely dangerous as we could decide in haste and regret at leisure.