EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy has come and gone. His visit has been glibly dismissed by the Labour Party leadership as the musing of a chance visitor unfamiliar with our unique circumstances.

Too easy. Nobody else has been able to disregard what Lamy had to tell: the facts unadorned. The choice before us is EU membership or membership minus. It's what we've all known all along.

Some of us have been making it sound different, that's all. Membership minus is what we have now. What we've had since 1970: looking in from the outside. We have fared well. We now have an opportunity to do spectacularly better.

Lamy was no tourist. It doesn't take forever to find out that Malta is exceptionally dependent on foreign trade. We import virtually everything we need and are obliged to export goods and services to make up for it. He wasn't baffled by our uniqueness.

Trade is and will ever be our lifeline. Gaining full access to a market of 400 million souls is incomparable to listening to it buzz and hum just out of reach. Membership minus is trade minus.

None of us have the cheek to question Lamy's authority to describe the EU, its global role, its aspirations, its relationship with Malta. The door is open for Malta. We do have to establish our credentials and we do have to make a clear choice.

Sometimes it doesn't matter which way you jump so long as you get out of the way of whatever is coming at you. Sometimes it does matter.

If we jump the wrong way on EU membership, it's membership minus for the forseeable future. We will still have to comply with EU regulations if we want to export and survive. We will go through the difficulties of adjusting to the new reality and at our expense alone.

Our exports will have to be EU quality, our reality will be membership minus quality because we will not be able to afford to do much about it for many years to come.

We could jump the wrong way. We have a media-empire-cum-political-party plugging away for membership minus 24/7. Something short of half of us have been seduced by the illusion that we can stop the clock, ignore globalisation, restructure our economy without collecting taxes and live happily ever after.

There is no time left to dither. Every Maltese and Gozitan with any ambition at all to seize the chance offered by EU membership must act to counter the hypnotic effect of jigger-the-Nationalists-at-any-cost television.

Every organisation with a national responsibility is called upon to make a choice. The people who lead civil society organisations today have a heavy responsibility to the future of the country. Long ahead of the referendum they must speak clearly regardless of the electoral ambitions of the parties in parliament.

Civil society organisations must be prepared to take responsibility for the consequences of their choice. Not choosing is not an option: it would be a culpable dereliction of duty at a moment of the greatest national importance.

Alternattiva Demokratika has made its choice clear. We are determined to reach out for improvements in economic performance, educational options, consumer rights, food safety, labour safety and conditions of work, gender equality, human rights, clean air, safe water and nature conservation.

We want our government's wings clipped. We want to bind them to the standards which EU citizens have chosen for themselves. We want to have effective remedies when they fail to deliver.

We expect everybody else to do the same. We will cooperate fully with anyone and with any organisation that refuses to be cornered into a fatal paralysis.

It is not only for political parties to speak out on matters of major national importance. It is for every national institution to exercise the legitimate rights of civil society, to break out of the confines imposed by membership minus bi-partisan polarisation.

Alternattiva Demokratika has called for an alliance of all forces that recognise the clear opportunities of EU membership, the risks and certain losses of membership minus. We stand to be counted. Who else?

Dr Vassallo is Chairperson of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party www.alternattiva.org.mt

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