Europe's Small States

The Malta Independent on Sunday



The YES campaign for the referendum, well-oiled by our tax money, has stopped making any logical analysis of` why EU membership is good for us. They just limit themselves to assertions and to prove their point they just say that everybody else thinks so.

This `everybody else thinks so` is given both a national and an international perspective. On the national front the business organisations have been organised like a well conducted choir to profess, using dubious studies financed again from our tax-money through grants received from government, that they like what the government has negotiated and are all for membership.` Unions representing white collar employees joined the chorus too arguing that EU`s labour rights and safety standards are superior to ours so employees would undoubtedly benefit from membership.` Little they give weight to the haughtier argument as to whether the EU bureaucracy we would have to carry would leave us competitive to have a job to work here in the first place.

` I meet a significant number of persons who normally vote PN and will probably do so again, that` very confidentially profess that they will vote No in the referendum because they cannot understand how the rigidity of EU bureaucracy could be good for Malta to retain the flexibility and the differentiation we need to survive.` The local chorus was also reinforced by a few` ex-Labourites who lost their way years back,` sometimes many years back,` and who for unclear reasons now think that whatever their ex-Party does must be wrong.

The message being delivered with repetitive impact is that everybody over here is for EU membership and it is only Alfred Sant`s pique that is sustaining a dissenting opinion.` They obviously maintain that this dissent could be overcome through the sheer weight of expensive propaganda.

On the international front we are advised that each and every country with European and democratic credentials is in a mad race to join the EU in membership and Malta should not miss the opportunity to do the same. For good measure it is added that all main European Socialist parties are pro-EU, and that Alfred Sant is not only out of tune with the trends and forces in Europe,` but is also a black sheep amongst his peers in the Socialist International.

So the poor confused voter has to decide on such an important matter which binds him and his children irreversibly into a rigid EU membership position, not on the basis of any logical argumentation,` but through the sheer force of the media campaign that tries to persuade that this is an irresistible force that one has no option but to join purely because everybody else is stampeding.

But how real it is that EU membership is what everybody wants` I certainly challenge it as an unfounded assertion`

Domestically I meet a significant number of persons who normally vote PN and will probably do so again, that` very confidentially profess that they will vote No in the referendum because they cannot understand how the rigidity of EU bureaucracy could be good for Malta to retain the flexibility and the differentiation we need to survive.

Clearly such people will not accept to address Labour Party mass meetings to express their views and sometimes I get the impression that they would not even confide in their own wife/husband/parents/children on the matter. The government is known not only to reward some of the` Labour dissenters who give strength to the Yes campaign,` but also to castigate its own for any deviations from rigid party policy. ` None of the other small states of Europe, that do not have the specific circumstances of Luxembourg and Cyprus, is seeking EU membership.`

And as I reflect on the international dimension I realise we will soon be hosting the European Small Nations games amongst us. The participants will be Malta, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Monaco, Andorra, San Marino and Liechtenstein.

How many of these small states are or are seeking EU membership` Apart from Malta, only Luxembourg and Cyprus meet the bill. But their realities are very different from ours and have very specific reasons for their choices.

Luxembourg is a founder member given the importance of its steel industry in the post-war days.` It is geographically land-locked surrounded by France, Belgium and Germany.` It has used membership to build an `offshore onshore financial centre ` which the big EU members now want to disband.` Luxembourg is using its veto rights together with` Switzerland`s right to dissent to justify why it should maintain its advantages; advantages that are being denied to Malta as a candidate member.

Cyprus has well-known political reason to join in membership.` It considers EU membership as the best lever to force Turkish dilution of support for the occupation of Northern Cyprus. With the help of Greece, Cyprus as an EU member could force Turkey, whose economy depends on EU aid and who is seeking membership, to accept a unified Cyprus and regain the sovereign right over the Northern Cyprus territory which has been missed for nearly 30 years.

None of the other small states of Europe, that do not have the specific circumstances of Luxembourg and Cyprus, is seeking EU membership. They realise that the smaller their state, the bigger the disadvantage of having to absorb the Brussels bureaucracy and retain the flexibility to compete and win.` And these small states are not exactly falling behind, politically or economically, are they`

So whom should Malta emulate` The small states of Europe that because of their particular circumstances which do not apply to us,` are or are seeking EU membership, or the small states who are quietly enjoying their right to be flexibly different`