Thank you Mr Gallimore

Di-ve

26^th February 2003

Di-ve.com

Alfred Mifsud

The Ambassador of the EU Communities for Malta Ronald Gallimore is a fine jovial person. His job here is a diplomatic one and his performance evaluation will depend on whether Malta’s membership in the EU on 1st May 2004 will materialise or not.

This week, in the very heart of the referendum campaign, Mr Gallimore called a press conference ‘to set the record straight’ on some ‘inaccuracies’ emanating from the No camp.

If I needed a reason for staying away from voting in the referendum Mr Gallimore gave it to me. Thank you Mr Gallimore! Because his to ‘set-the-record-straight’ press conference was nothing but diplomatic interference in our internal affairs. The moment the referendum has been called the EU should take a back seat and let the Maltese decide for ourselves. After all, the yes camp has all the resources, including our tax money funding MIC office, to set any record straight.

“ If I needed a reason for staying away from voting in the referendum MrGallimore gave it to me”

Where was Mr Gallimore or his predecessors to set the record straight when in the peak of the election campaign of 1998, much more binding and important than a consultative campaign for the referendum, we were promised a cool Lm100 million p.a. in EU funds purely by de-freezing our EU application?

Where was Mr Gallimore to set the record straight when just weeks ago, the PM said that all serious factories would close down if we do not vote Yes to EU membership, implying that the EU would deny them their present access to EU markets.

Where is Gallimore to set the record straight each time individuals from the yes camp claim that we can influence decisions taken by the EU when most decisions these days are taken by qualified majority voting which we will have no hope to influence with just three votes out of some 350?

And what did Mr Gallimore want to set the record straight about? He said that the alternative to EU membership,(not full membership please just membership), is a partnership within the context of the EU’s Euro Med’s policy and Malta will not be offered any special relationships.

Hearing such arguments I cannot help remembering the days before Labour was elected in 1971 for the first time post-independence. I remember how many times we were advised by the British that they will not give any better deal than what was given to Borg Olivier at independence. Yet experience shows that whilst in the decision stage foreign powers will throw their weight behind the faction which best serves their interest, once they face an elected government with a democratic mandate to re-negotiate the deal, re-negotiate they will.

And considering, what would make Malta’s relations with the EU special? Even if the EU would not allow any special concessions like it allowed to Switzerland, it is up to us to make it special by using the flexibility we enjoy outside membership to differentiate ourselves from all the rest and open up niches that distinguish us from the others and gain us a competitive edge in the global markets.

“Where was Mr Gallimore to set the record straight when just weeks ago, the PM said that all serious factories would close down if we do not vote Yes to EU membership, implying that the EU would deny them their present access to EU markets”

Let’s consider the finance world. Now suppose that the EU would not be willing to negotiate anything special for Malta outside membership. There is nothing to stop Malta to do exactly what Switzerland and other small non-EU European jurisdictions are presently doing and build a serious private banking international centre supported on the one-hand by controls against money-laundering up to the most rigid international standards, and on the other hand on secrecy and guarantee of non-disclosure.

At a time when all EU countries, Switzerland and other non-EU small European jurisdictions seem to have agreed to implement the withholding tax model to keep their non-disclosure standards,Malta offering a no withholding tax solution would clearly hold a substantial edge attracting substantial business.
Malta could thus drive a hole in the EU’s wishes to adopt a full-disclosure or withholding tax model for cross-border deposits and interest bearing securities.

Can the EU afford to refuse to negotiate with Malta in such circumstances? Negotiations are never one-sided. To succeed in negotiations one has to know one’s strengths and certainly not get impressed or de-motivated by the threats of the other side that one has no choice but total submission, in this particular case equivalent to full membership, (excuse me just membership).

Mr Gallimore should have taken a back-seat and let us decide for ourselves. Let us believe in our own strengths or let us be over-awed by our weaknesses, but in the name of democracy he has no right to interfere at this stage. If the EU wanted to ensure that Malta votes a definite yes it had all the time in the negotiations to make real concessions to Malta.

Concessions are like a binding protocol by all present and future membership acknowledging Malta’s neutrality and pledging to respect and sustain it irrespective of present and future developments in the EU Common Foreign, Security and Defencepolicies. EU could have offered to give us the net Lm81 million fully in free cash flow form for the first three years once they know that Malta has dim prospects for building the capacity to administer project funding in such a short-time.

In the name of democracy the EU and its representative here should leave us to our own devices to reach our own conclusions. If there is any need to interfere, it is about the democratic deficit of this campaign with one side being given all the resources to make its case, even helping itself to lavish public funds, whilst the ‘no’ side having to fund itself from its very frugal resources. If democracy still means anything to EU and is still a basic criterion for membership, Mr Gallimoreshould have set the record straight on this democratic deficit.

He should set the record straight by condemning the government for seeking a referendum so early, clearly for politically partisan reasons, and expect us to ratify a treaty which is still in draft form and is not available in Maltese language to all who want to access it.

For me this campaign is an insult to my freedom to think and decide. I strongly believe that Labour should protest vehemently about this interference by pulling out of the campaign without any further consideration.