Hoteliers have a right to favour EU accession - Vella

The Labour Party's spokesman on tourism, Karmenu Vella has denied any conflict of interest between his political role and his involvement as chairman of one of the island's leading hotel chains.

A survey commissioned by the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association among members has found that 100 per cent of the hoteliers in the five-star category are in favour of EU membership.

Given Mr Vella's involvement, in a private capacity, in the five-star hotel sector, his apparent conflict of interest was raised at a business breakfast addressed by Labour leader Alfred Sant yesterday. Dr Sant replied that the question should be directed to Mr Vella himself.

On the political front, Mr Vella said he believed EU membership was not the best option for Malta and that tourism will be negatively affected.

Asked for his position as a senior post-holder in the hotel industry, Mr Vella said: "For the private sector, membership has positive and negative effects".

Did he believe there were more negative or positive implications for hoteliers through EU membership? There were more negative than positive implications, he answered.

"What suits hoteliers is not necessarily in the interest of the country, workers or the tourism sector in general. For instance, a hotelier might argue it is in his interest to recruit 10 foreigners from any member state. But is this in the interest of the economy or workers?

"I also want to point out that I did not reply to the questionnaire sent my MHRA. The questionnaire was sent to the individual hotels and it was up to the general manager to reply. Every executive in such a position has a right to his opinion and if the executive felt that EU membership benefits his hotel and he replied accordingly he did the right thing."

So far as the tourism sector in general goes, Mr Vella believes EU membership will seriously harm competitiveness.

"It is a fact that upon accession we will no longer be in a position to give certain incentives to certain markets or sectors, food prices will go up because of imports from the EU and harmonisation of VAT will increase taxation."

Mr Vella said he believed the MHRA should have organised a more balanced and credible conference.

"It would have made more sense had they first held a balanced conference before holding the survey. Unfortunately, the MHRA conference was biased in the sense that there was no exposure to the Labour Party's partnership option."

Mr Vella added that all the presentations and reports discussed in the conference only took into consideration the membership and status quo options completely ignoring the partnership alternative.

Asked why he refused to participate in the MHRA conference, Mr Vella said: "The MHRA conference was opened by the president followed by the presentation of three reports and a further exposure of three other presentations.

"I was invited to take part afterwards in order to reply to questions in a panel made up of Tourism Minister Michael Refalo, Foreign Minister Joe Borg, chief negotiator Richard Cachia Caruana and EU ambassador Ronald Gallimore. There would have been no time whatsoever to go into explaining our partnership option and that is why I felt I should not participate. If I had the time to explain our proposals in detail I would have accepted the invitation.

"My non-participation was not intended to be a sign of any disrespect to my colleagues at the MHRA. They are all my friends and I respect them but I thought it was almost insulting to invite me to reply to questions for a few minutes without having the time to explain our proposals especially since the conference was totally one-sided."

Mr Vella said he respected the decision taken by hoteliers in the survey in favour of EU membership: "I recognise they have every right to be in favour of membership."