MHRA presents EU reports to political parties

The Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association yesterday presented its conclusive EU reports to the political parties, meeting head-on the challenge to do so laid down by the Labour Party.

All the constituted bodies have been advised that the MHRA will make available copies of the various reports for their reference as well, the association said.

The MHRA council said it was doing this in order to send "a clear message that the reports were prepared professionally and that it has nothing to hide.

"The MHRA council categorically states once again that it is an apolitical organisation and that it does not want to enter the political arena over an issue of national importance which from its end has been handled in the most professional way," it said.

"The MHRA has been working towards a decision on the EU for over four years, under five councils, and three different presidents," MHRA president Winston Zahra said.

"It's a very sad situation to see an association like ours, which carries out its work in a professional manner for the benefit of its members and the tourism industry, to be used for political gain. In our reports we took a detailed, objective approach to the overall analysis.

"No one can doubt the result of this survey and the MHRA council stands firmly behind the conclusive vote of its members, a vote which has nothing to do with partisan politics and all to do with the protection of our members' investments and the future benefit of our industry."

The reports, which concluded that the tourism industry stood to gain from EU membership, will also be available to members of the public from MHRA offices as announced last week by the association's council.

Labour leader Alfred Sant had implied that the association was keeping the reports under wraps and had criticised the MHRA for not giving the MLP a copy of them.

"The MHRA stated that a detailed printout of the presentations given during their conference last week was in fact passed to the Labour Party last Friday on request.

"The presentations contained a full detailed synopsis of all the reports. The association had also made it clear that the reports will be available for viewing at their offices for anyone who wanted to verify their credibility," the association said.

During a conference last Tuesday, the MHRA published three studies which concluded that Malta could potentially lose up to 19.5 per cent of its tourism revenue if it stayed out of the EU.

The MHRA also showed the potential downsides of membership and also examined various scenarios of non-membership.

The survey results among MHRA members were more than conclusive, with only one per cent voting against EU membership.