Limbo in the Mediterranean

First we were told that Malta should become a Switzerland in the Mediterranean. Then they told us that we should go for partnership.

Now Alfred Sant is presenting yet another substitute for membership - shelving both membership and partnership for a few years while the country is being modernised and restructured.

The benefits of this brand new shelving policy are illusory. For starters, it is based on the assumption that the whole process of European integration, which admits countries in batches, will be stalled for a few years just to wait for Malta to twiddle its thumbs.

If we do not join in the next enlargement, we will have to wait for countries like Bulgaria, Romania and former Yugoslavia to catch up before we are admitted. That could take years if not decades.

Secondly, joining Europe is all about facing the challenges and growing pains of modernisation and restructuring but with the EU's assistance to face them.

Aborting the negotiations now amounts to facing them without such assistance. The process of restructuring is like purgatory. Postponing the decision to join for a few years could transform our purgatory into a limbo.

To reassure us about the shelving policy, Dr Sant states: "There could hardly be adverse consequences with such an approach both for the anti- and the pro-membership lobbies". Proof that this is not the case is supplied by an unlikely source: the General Workers' Union.

One of the unpublished reports they commissioned before deciding on EU membership states:

"A much worse scenario as far as funds are concerned, would be that if by the time the European Union would be formulating its 2007-13 budget, Malta would freeze its application. This would mean that according to the present situation and time-frames of the local political situation, Malta would lose both pre-accession as well as structural and cohesion funds for the 2007-2013 budget, meaning that if finally Malta would decide to become an EU member, it would have to wait for the 2013-2019 budget.

"On the other hand, so far as pre-accession funds are concerned, as the name of the fund implies, they are only accessible for those countries that are seeking membership in the Union or are in the negotiating stage. Here one may ask why Malta did not get the desired financial assistance from pre-accession funds. Here one has to note that when the current budget was being formulated, Malta had frozen its application for EU membership, therefore the country was deprived of such funds."

Clearly then, not joining the EU in the next enlargement will throw Malta in the worst of all possible worlds.

Just keep one other thing in mind.

In 1991, Malta applied for membership. In 1996, Alfred Sant froze it. In 1998 it was defrosted. In 2002 Dr Sant wants to shelve it. In say 2005 Dr Sant will reconsider membership! Imagine what the reaction of the European Union to this Maltese circus act is going to be.

I hope that the MLP will make yet another change in its EU policy - a genuine yes to the European Union.

Unfortunately Dr Sant's latest option is just a camouflaged no.